The Late Letter
by TaraNightreader
Summary: All of us have wished we could go to Hogwarts, that our letter simply got lost in the mail or arrived late for some reason. For Karen Makarov, it did.
1. The Letter Arrives

The silver moonlight shone in through the window, illuminating a part of the small bedroom. It wasn't much but it was just enough light to read to, which was what the young girl sitting on the bed was doing. The book in her hand was titled _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ and from the bookcase opposite the bed it was clear these were the kind of books she liked the most. The rest of the Harry Potter books were there, as well as a multitude of fantasy novels and fairy tales.

The girl herself was a petite thing despite her fourteen years. She looked even smaller the way she was sitting, her knees drawn up and her hands resting on the book she was using her knees to prop up. Small dimples formed as she smiled at something in the book, her freckle-sprayed nosed crinkling slightly. She lightly brushed a lock of her brown hair away but it quickly fell back. It always annoyed her the way her hair didn't want to decide whether it was straight or curly. It was at an odd point between the two and somehow managed to get frizzy as well, which reminded Karen of a brown haystack. She had always wanted to have her mother's hair instead; beautiful honey blonde curls that always looked perfect.

She quickly forgot her hair though. Despite having read the book many times before she was completely absorbed in it. In fact, upon reaching one of her favourite parts a slight shiver went through her. Karen blinked. Odd, that had never happened before. It was like something special had happened just then. She shook her head. Nonsense, it was just the excitement of reading her favourite part. It had been a while since she last read it. Yes, that had to be it.

So Karen Makarov ignored the odd shiver and, after finishing the chapter, closed the book and went to sleep.

~i~i~i~

Karen woke up the next morning to a light tapping sound. She flipped over and, eyes still closed, fumbled with her hand for the alarm clock. It took her a few moments to realize that the sound wasn't stopping, despite her pressing the button. She blinked a few times, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and looked around for the source of the sound.

Karen fell out of her bed. She sat bolt upright and stared at her window, only to find there was nothing there. I must have been still dreaming, she thought to herself. Because there was no way there had actually been an owl outside her window. She stood up slowly and went over to look out the window, just in case. No, there was nothing there. Karen laughed a little. She had had dreams about getting a letter to Hogwarts before but they had never been quite like that. With a shrug Karen headed towards the bathroom, figuring the toothbrush would help her wake up properly.

It wasn't long before Karen was in the kitchen munching on a piece of toast. Her mother stood toasting a slice for herself and her father came in shortly after with the newspaper and some bills. Except for one of the envelopes was different. It was thick and yellowish. Karen stared. She shut her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. The letter was still there. It had to be her imagination, she was simply still partly asleep. Or it was just some letter in a similar envelope, the other bills were on top of it so she couldn't actually see what was written on it. Before Karen could convince herself of this her father picked up the letters and shuffled through them.

"Here, this one's for you." He said, tossing her the letter. "Not often you get handwritten letters these days."

Karen couldn't reply. She couldn't even reach out to take the letter now lying in front of her on the table, too afraid that it might vaporize if she touched it. Finally Karen gathered up her courage and picked up the letter. It couldn't be real. She wanted it to be real. But it couldn't be. Slowly her fingers stroked the green letters, the Hogwarts crest, the wax seal. It had her name on it. It even had her bedroom on it, just like Harry's had.

Karen swallowed and, hands shaking slightly, opened the letter and read the first page.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall_

_Dear Karen Makarov_

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

_Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31._

_Yours sincerely,_  
_Minerva McGonagall_

Karen shook her head in disbelief as she read over the list of books and equipment. It was the exact same one that was in the book. This had to be a prank, she decided. One of her friends must have sent it. Although none of them were really fans of the books they knew she loved them, one of them could have decided to make this for her. In which case she had to admire the details. The whole letter was handwritten in green ink on yellow parchment. She wondered how her friends had managed to write with such good calligraphy.

Suddenly Karen realised there was a third page. She was certain there had only been two pages in Harry's letter so she curiously read what it said.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Dear Karen Makarov_

_We apologize for the delay of your letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As your situation is a unique one we will, of course, be sending someone to assist you and to explain the reasons for the delay. You may expect someone to arrive at your house at 3 pm on June 26._

_Yours sincerely,_  
_Minerva McGonagall_

Karen frowned slightly after reading the third page. June 26 was today. So her friend was coming over later to tell her it was a joke? That was the only logical explanation. The third page was different from the others though and she couldn't help but wonder why they had not made it as carefully as the other two. The ink was black instead of green (although they could have just run out of green ink, of course) and the handwriting looked like the one writing it had been in a hurry. Same handwriting as the other pages, but not nearly as neat. Almost as if though the other two had been written some time before the third page.

Karen was roused from her thoughts by her father's voice. "Who's the letter from, Karen?" He asked, looking curiously at her over the top of the newspaper.

"Um… just a prank by one of my friends, I think." She replied, unsure how to explain it. Her parents knew of her love for the books, of course, but this wouldn't be something they'd understand. Or more like, they would probably just laugh and say it was a cute prank, so Karen didn't really want to tell them.

"Well, it was nice of them to go to that much trouble to send you something, prank or not." Her mother said with a smile. Karen just nodded and began reading the letter again. Nothing for it but to wait until 3 pm and see who would show up.

~i~i~i~

At 2:39 pm Karen was trying her very best not to pace around the floor. Oh she was sure it was a prank pulled by her friends alright, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out which one. Karen didn't have very many friends, in fact she had exactly three. Anna wasn't imaginative enough to think of this, Milly wasn't as good a friend of Karen's as the other two so she was unlikely to do this and Cassie didn't like the books so it didn't really make sense for her to do something so detailed. But it had to be one of the three, just which one? Maybe it had been all of them?

Karen glanced at the clock again. 2:42 pm. They probably weren't even going to show up. They most likely put the hour there just to make her think they would and then they would call her and tease her about waiting tomorrow. So she should just focus on reading for now and ignore the time completely. With that thought Karen picked up Harry Potter again and started reading.

2:46 pm. Dangit! She wasn't going to look at the clock! Karen sighed and closed the book again. Clearly her mind would not be distracted from the letter and the time. This was stupid, really. She should have just called her friends this morning to find out which one of them sent the letter. And yet she hadn't. A part of her knew it was because she wanted it to be real, that as soon as her friends confirmed that it was they who had sent her the letter that faint glimmer of hope would go away forever. Karen cursed the little voice telling her there was a chance where she knew there wasn't one.

And then the doorbell rang.


	2. A Stranger at the Door

Karen's heart jumped. In a matter of moments she was downstairs, heading for the door. She was about to shout that she'd get it but as she opened her mouth she saw her father turn the corner leading to the front door. She still ran after him, arriving behind him just as he opened the door.

Outside there stood an unfamiliar man. He was wearing a light grey suit of a kind that, in Karen's opinion, would have fit better for an older person. The man only seemed about 30, with chestnut coloured hair and smiling grey eyes. She supposed he was rather handsome, high cheek bones and a nice smile were his main features. He was also wearing a top hat.

"Good afternoon." The man said. "Mr. Makarov, I presume?" Karen's father nodded, shaking the stranger's hand. Karen's heart had sunk as soon as she saw the man. Not her friends, therefore not for her. Still, she was curious what the stranger wanted so she didn't leave just yet.

"My name is Wineca Flitton and I am here on behalf of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. May I come in?" Karen stared wide eyed as her father, slightly confused, invited Mr. Flitton inside. "Ah, and you must be Karen." Flitton said when he spotted her standing in the hallway, staring at him. "I believe your letter reached you safely this morning?"

"Um… is this a joke?" The words were out of Karen's mouth before she could stop them. Flitton blinked, then smiled kindly at her.

"A joke, miss Makarov? Not at all, in fact this matter is very serious."

"But Hogwarts isn't real." Karen stated. This was going way too far for a prank from her friends, getting a stranger to pretend to be from Hogwarts. Maybe she was on some hidden camera show? Well, she was not falling for it. Sure she wanted Hogwarts to be real but she was also very conscious of the fact that it wasn't.

"Of course, the news of a magical school must be quite shocking for you but I assure you, miss Makarov, that Hogwarts is very real, and so are your magical abilities."

"Magical abilities?" Karen's father said, clearly confused by the conversation. "Karen, do you know this man?"

Choosing to ignore her father Karen replied to Mr. Flitton instead. "I think I'd know if I could do magic, I've tried since I was little."

"And you are quite certain nothing has worked?" There was a glint in Mr. Flitton's eyes that made Karen stop. Sure there had been times when she seemed to have succeeded in doing something, but it was all coincidences.

"O… of course. Anyways, it's not the magic that's the point. The point is Hogwarts. I'd know if Hogwarts was real. Someone from the fanbase would have found out if it was."

This seemed to confuse Mr. Flitton. "Fanbase? I'm afraid you've lost me now, miss Makarov. Am I correct in assuming you knew about Hogwarts before your letter arrived?"

"Of course I knew about Hogwarts, everyone does!" Karen was feeling angry now. It wasn't right to make fun of her like this. Harry Potter was a series she cared about and mocking her this way was just cruel. Fortunately her father chose this moment to intervene.

"Now, Mr. Flitton, did you come here just to upset my daughter? I don't know anything about a hog wart or whatever, but this is unacceptable."

"I am terribly sorry, Mr. Makarov, at the moment I am almost as confused as you are. I have come here to explain to miss Makarov and you about her acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Your daughter, Mr. Makarov, is a witch. Being a witch, however, does not come with automatic knowledge of the school so I would like to ask, miss Makarov, that you please explain what you mean by 'everyone knows. Mr. Flitton looked intently into Karen's eyes. She felt ridiculous, having to explain something she knew full well he must know.

"I mean that everyone knows. It's a book series. I love it and all but I'm not stupid, I know Hogwarts isn't real so please just stop pretending."

Karen's father seemed to suddenly figure out what they were talking about. "Wait a minute, is this about that book series you love? About Harry Potter?"

"Yes!" Karen was glad that at least her father seemed to be on her side. "Hogwarts is the school from the books, you must have heard me talk about it a million times!"

At this her father's brow furrowed. "Hogwarts…" he said slowly, "the place in the books. What does that have to do with this Hogwarts school this man is talking about?"

Karen stared at her father. "What do you mean, what does it have to do with it? It's the same place, obviously."

Her father was looking at her oddly now. "Hogwarts… and Hogwarts… are the same place?" He exchanged a look with Mr. Flitton that Karen didn't like at all.

"You just said the same name twice, how is that not obvious!" Karen felt angry now. She didn't want to be shouting but she knew she had raised her voice. What the heck was going on?

"I think," Mr. Flitton said, "this may be a result of your daughter's seer abilities."

"Seer?" Karen and her father asked at the same time.

"Perhaps we could take this into the living room?" Mr. Flitton said, making a vague gesture with his hand that somehow pointed out that they were standing in the entrance hall.

~i~i~i~

A few minutes later Karen entered the living room to find the others sitting there, Karen's mother included. Karen had excused herself to the bathroom to compose herself a little before continuing this ridiculous discussion. She still felt thoroughly annoyed and confused. Her dad had to be in on it, that was the only explanation. Because no matter how much the tiny voice inside her grew that told her Hogwarts just might be real after all she refused to listen to it. It was a book series and she would not be caught on camera for some stupid tv show believing it was real.

As she entered Mr. Flitton was explaining about magic to her parents. With heavy steps she walked in, crossed her arms and said"Prove it."

"I'm sorry?"

"Prove that Hogwarts is real. Prove that I'm a witch, or at least that you're a wizard." She stared defiantly at Mr. Flitton. He did not blink.

"Very well." And just like that Mr. Flitton pulled out a wand from his pocket and, with a slight movement of the wrist and a mutter of the words 'wingardium leviosa', made the vase on the living room table float into the air. Her mother's eyes looked like they were about to pop from her head. Her father's mouth opened and closed in disbelief. Karen herself only stared. She wanted this to be real so badly. By now the voice that told her it was real was louder than her logic, yet logic persisted there could be strings tied to the vase. But it was floating, she could see no strings. No, there was only one way she was going to be truly convinced. Mr. Flitton was looking at her, waiting for a reaction.

"Use it on me." She muttered.

"Use what on you, miss Makarov? Magic?" Mr. Flitton's voice was gentle as he lowered the vase back to the table.

"Yes." Karen replied. "Use… use locomotor mortis on me."

Flitton didn't ask how she knew what that was this time, he simply looked her in the eye and then, with a small sigh, performed the curse on her. Karen squealed. Her legs locked together and for the life of her she couldn't move them apart. She almost fell over before he performed the counter curse on her, setting her legs free once more. And then she laughed. It was real! It was all real! It had to be. The vase might have been done by strings but there was no way Flitton could do something like that to her own body without her knowing about it. Karen could have danced with joy. She wanted to jump and shout and cry all at the same time. Hogwarts was real!

* * *

A/N: Reviews would be loved)


	3. Karen the Seer

Karen finally managed to stop laughing, although she was still giddy with joy and small tears had formed in her eyes. She sat down on the edge of a chair and looked at Flitton. Suddenly she remembered the odd exchange earlier where her father hadn't seemed to be able to make a connection between Hogwarts and… well Hogwarts.

"So what was this stuff about a seer?" She asked, still unable to be completely upset about it as the thought of Hogwarts and magic being real ran over and over again through her mind. "I said Hogwarts and it was like you couldn't make the connection, dad."

"But you said two different things, sweetie. You said Hogwarts, the place from the book, and then this Hogwarts school." Her father was still clearly confused by the magic and this didn't help him at all. He usually liked to be on top of things so it was rare to see him this confused, which helped to bring Karen back down from her cloud a little.

"That's the same word!"

Flitton coughed politely. "That is why I believe it comes from your seer abilities. You see, you are actually saying two different words yourself, miss Makarov." Karen stared at him in confusion. Of course she wasn't saying two different words, she'd be able to hear it if she was. "Tell me, miss Makarov, what is this book you've read about?"

"It's about Harry Potter, of course. It's a really famous book series."

"Of course. Now tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Flitton, what did you hear her say the book was about?"

Karen's parents looked at each other, clearly as confused as Karen was. "About Michael Davids, like she said."

Karen's eyes widened. "I didn't say that, I said Harry Potter!"

Mr. Flitton smiled slightly. "Yes, I believe the reason must be that the spell has messed with your seer abilities." Karen and her parents looked at him in confusion so he explained. "Miss Makarov, you had a very powerful spell placed on you which not only subdued your magical powers but also rendered us, the wizarding community, completely unable to detect your whereabouts. It seems that in order for your abilities to come forwards despite the spell your mind created an illusion to make it work. You have been reading a book series about this Michael Davids, but you have in fact been seeing it as a series about Harry Potter. When you believed you had said Hogwarts twice earlier, you were in fact saying Bronzhill and Hogwarts. I presume Bronzhill is a place from the actual book. Most likely your hearing and others were manipulated by the spell so that no one could find out what you were really reading."

Karen was completely baffled. Bronzhill? She had never heard of the place before. And she had had conversations about Harry Potter with people, how could they have been talking about something else? Unless this other book was exceedingly similar it didn't seem possible at all. Could it be that they had really been talking about different things all this time?

"But… how come I heard you say Bronzhill just now but I heard my dad say Hogwarts?"

"There is a chance that there were traces of the spell left. It was a very strong enchantment after all. Or perhaps your mind merely did not want to confuse you and so went on letting you say and hear different things until you were told the truth."

"But… that's…"

"Quite a lot for you to take in, yes. I apologize for all of this, miss Makarov, but it seems to have been your parents will that this would happen. One cannot really blame them, they did this while being prosecuted after all."

"Wait, what?" Now Karen was thoroughly confused. She looked at her parents. "What does he mean?"

Karen's mother suddenly went pale. "Oh dear," she whispered, sounding more frightened than she had been by the magic.

"Mom? What's going on?" Karen asked. Seeing her mother like this scared her.

Her father took her mother's hand. She looked like she was about to start crying, barely holding herself together. "We were going to tell you when you got older…" She began.

"There's no easy way to go about this," Her father continued. "Karen, sweetie, you're… you're adopted."

Karen felt cold, like all the heat had been drained from her body. No, this wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

"You're still our daughter, honey, and we love you." Of course they were still her parents, her mother didn't have to point it out. But… Well this was completely unexpected. Karen had never been one of those who wished for a different family or thought she might be adopted. She loved her family. She might not be as pretty as her mother but she had always believed she had some of her fierceness in her. And she had her father's eyes. Her grandmother was where she got the small spray of freckles from and she got her love of reading from her grandfather. How could all of that be a lie? Those features she had always believed to be from these people actually came from someone else?

Karen's eyes suddenly focused on her parents. They were staring at her and she realised that they were afraid. They were terrified that she would reject them. Didn't they know she would never do that? So what if somebody else gave birth to her? They were still the ones who raised her, they were her real parents. Shaking slightly Karen moved to the couch and buried her head in her mother's hair. She felt her mother's arms tighten around her and she squeezed back. The words wouldn't come out just now but she wanted her mother to know that she wouldn't accept anyone else as her parents, not ever.

They held each other like that for a few minutes before Mr. Flitton coughed again. Karen left her mother's embrace, although she only moved the sit between her parents, holding both of their hands.

"I'm sorry to have to cut this short, miss Makarov, but with the information that you are a seer things are a bit different." Flitton sounded genuinely sorry to have to bring her this news, but he continued anyways. "Can you tell me what exactly it is you have read? I heard you mention Harry Potter earlier, what is it you have seen, or read, about him?"

"Everything," Karen replied simply, "The books are about his whole life, from entering Hogwarts till after the Battle of Hogwarts, plus a bit from the time he got to the Dursleys and an epilogue that happened years later. But… um… why were my… my birth parents," the word felt strange in her mouth, "why were they being prosecuted?" According to the time frame of the books the Second Wizarding War happened when she was just a kid. Could they have been people who were involved in the war that were simply never mentioned? This thing about her having seer abilities was settling in as well. The only seer she remembered from the books was Trelawney and she had only told two prophecies. If Karen was a seer, how come she had been able to read every detail of Harry's life? Doubt was creeping back into her mind. She reminded herself of the sensation of the leg-lock curse Flitton had used on her earlier. It had to be real. There had to be an explanation.

Flitton looked uncomfortable. "I'm really not the one most familiar with the case," he began, "But what I do know is that your mother was a very powerful seer. She was Nordic, seer abilities have always been stronger up there, but she married an Englishman and they lived somewhere in Britain. It seems that during the Second Wizarding War Voldemort wanted to find your mother, amongst other people, and have her use her abilities to find out where the Elder Wand was located. Your parents must have heard of this and, in order to protect their family, vanished completely. They were believed to be dead, as were you, but it seems like they got away somehow. Most likely they placed you up for adoption and sent you to a muggle family they knew would take good care of you after placing the enchantments to hide your magic."

Karen sat quite still while she listened. She would have been two or three years old when they gave her away so it's not like she would remember much. They could even have cast obliviate or something like that on her to make sure she wouldn't remember a thing. So many new questions arose from this. Why hadn't they come back for her after the war? She loved her parents and wouldn't have wanted to have any others but… she was so little when the war ended. Why didn't they come and get her? Simpler thoughts also floated around her mind. What were their names? What did they look like? Did she look like them? Was there anything else she had inherited from these people who had given birth to her? Instead she asked;

"But then why did the spells stop working? I thought spells only stopped when…" Karen trailed off, eyes widening slightly. Spells wore off when the caster died. Her birth parents were dead, dead and they had died very recently. Suddenly Karen remembered the odd shiver she had gotten the night before. Could it have been?

"I'm afraid they must have passed away sometime last night. They never came back after the war, that was why they were believed to be dead. But magic was sensed here yesterday and, after investigation, you were found to be alive. This is all very unusual, had we known you were here we would of course have sent for you to start school at eleven."

The way he said 'we' made another question pop up, one she could at least ask. "Um… what do you do at Hogwarts?" She knew most of the teachers from the books. Of course there were some who she never knew and some who died during the war. Someone could have quit. And then there was…

"I'm the teacher of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class." Mr. Flitton said with a hint of pride. "I have been since after the end of the war." Karen smiled. Somehow she had the feeling he would be a fun teacher. "Now, I suppose the main thing left is to ask whether you accept our invitation to the school. Your studies would be rather irregular, seeing as how you need to catch up on three years. In fact, professor McGonagall wants you to come to school early so that we can begin teaching you some things before school starts. Only if you want that, of course." Flitton looked questioningly at Karen. Somehow she felt slightly odd being the one asked the question. Usually people asked her parents, not her. But she knew what she wanted. This was something she had been dreaming of since she first read the first book.

"When do we leave?"

* * *

A/N: Next chapter will be up tomorrow or the day after most likely. Please leave a review and tell me what you think, it would mean the world to me :)


	4. Hogwarts

Karen stood with her parents outside their house, waiting for Mr. Flitton to arrive. She supposed she should call him professor Flitton from now on, that was the correct title. After she had told him she was going things had gone by in a blur. Her parents had taken a bit of convincing but after she assured them this was what she really wanted and Flitton explained everything about Hogwarts and magic to them, a talk she assumed he had made many times before, they finally agreed. Flitton had left after that, telling her he would pick her up in two days. They wanted to start her studies as soon as possible, she had a lot to catch up on after all. Karen wasn't sure how things were going to work exactly, but then neither did Mr. Flitton. Professor Flitton, she reminded herself. He hadn't seemed sure either but things would somehow work themselves out.

Karen was also not sure what she would need, exactly. She had packed and repacked a dozen times the night before. Clothes, mostly, and books. She was bringing all of her Harry Potter books as well as a few others. After finding out she was apparently the only one who had read the Harry Potter series she looked it up online. Typing Harry Potter into a search engine brought her nothing of importance except for the Harry Potter wiki. She wasn't sure why that was still there, maybe for her convenience to look things up? She also tried searching for Michael Davids. That brought up thousands of pages and, from the layouts on some of them, Karen knew those were pages she had seen before. Only then they had been about Harry. The Michael Davids series seemed like a fun book series, it was a rather typical fantasy one. It wasn't Harry Potter though. The only thing it seemed to have in common with it was that it was about a young boy who learnt magic. Davids learnt it from some old wizard though, not from a school. And it took place in a different world. Looking at it now made it seem ridiculous that she had ever seen it as the same thing. But she had been under a spell after all. This whole thing made Karen mildly curious about whether there were any other books she had read that were about real things too. Probably not, she decided.

Suddenly Flitton was there. He was wearing that same suit with the top hat again. If it hadn't been so early Karen would have felt awkward about people seeing them there, he looked rather silly. Then again, not as silly as some wizards dressed amongst muggles, she knew, so she supposed it was alright.

"Are you ready, miss Makarov?" He asked her, holding out an arm for her.

"Yeah, just… one moment." Karen gave her parents one last hug. They had also had a small talk about the adoption thing after Flitton left. Karen had assured them she didn't care, that they would always be her parents no matter what. The not caring part was a small lie. Of course it affected her and, even though she didn't think of those people as her parents, she wanted to know more about them. But she didn't want to give her parents any reason to worry so she said nothing about it.

After saying their goodbyes and promising to write Karen grabbed the handle of her suitcase and took professor Flitton's arm. He had her start walking down the street with him so that if anyone did see they wouldn't find it as strange if they disappeared. And then they did. Karen would have gasped if she had been capable of breathing. Her whole body ached, her stomach turned over, she tried to close her eyes, and then it was all over. Karen was sure she would have fallen over if Flitton hadn't been holding on to her. She remembered reading about how apparition felt but reading it and feeling it were two completely different things. Suppressing the need to vomit Karen shakily raised her head, looking around to see where they were.

They were standing in the middle of a street. The houses were thatched cottages and, after blinking a few times to recover from apparating, Karen managed to read the names of some of the stores; Honeydukes, The Three Broomsticks, Zonko's. Karen grinned. They were in Hogsmeade.

~i~i~i~

The walk to Hogwarts wasn't long and Karen could hardly contain her excitement. She had actually wanted to have a proper look around in Hogsmeade but she figured that could wait, Hogwarts was more important. When the castle came into view Karen heard herself gasp. It looked exactly like she had imagined, only ten times better. As they walked she tried to identify places from the outside. The tallest tower was clearly the Astronomy tower. Maybe that one was the Gryffindor Tower? It seemed to be at around the correct location.

Flitton didn't interrupt her thoughts, he seemed content to let her absorb everything in peace. So until he led her into the entrance hall the two walked in silence. Karen stopped then, staring all around. She realised she had been smiling since the castle first came into view, but she couldn't stop. She was actually standing in the entrance hall in Hogwarts!

Professor Flitton noticed her stopping and turned around, smiling slightly. "Come along, miss Makarov. The headmistress awaits." Karen started walking again, continuing to stare at everything as they walked. Many of the portraits stared back, some even greeted them.

"Professor Flitton, where will I be staying?" She asked when they left the entrance hall. "I mean, will I be sorted into a house and stay there alone until school starts? Or something else?" This question also sent Karen's mind spiralling to another one, which house would she be sorted into? Of course she had thought about it endlessly before but she had never been quite sure. She knew she was neither a Gryffindor nor a Slytherin, she wasn't nearly brave or cunning enough to be placed there. But which of the other two did she fit? She liked books sure enough and enjoyed learning, so long as it was about something entertaining anyhow. But that was the thing, she wasn't sure she was smart enough to be a Ravenclaw. As for Hufflepuff, Karen knew she was a loyal friend but she wasn't the most patient person. Added to that the fact that she didn't care much for hard work, especially not the physical kind, and Karen wasn't sure she fitted there either. She also didn't really have a preference, Karen liked all the houses. Well, she knew she'd probably not get along so well with most of the Slytherins given her personality, but she admired their qualities though. So which house would it be?

"I'm not entirely sure what McGonagall plans to do with you, I'm afraid. I doubt you'll be sorted before school begins though. All students are sorted when school starts, it's tradition. I'm afraid you'll most likely end up being sorted with the first years."

Karen winced. Sorted with the first years? Well, she was technically a first year herself, even if she should be starting fourth year. Oh no, she wouldn't be staying in the first year dorm as well? That would just be embarrassing. But if she wasn't to be sorted until school started where was she going to stay? She could hardly stay in the dormitories if she didn't belong to a house yet.

She was about to ask for Flitton's opinion when the staircase they were walking up suddenly started moving. Karen yelped and grabbed onto the railing. She had been watching one of the other staircases move earlier but hadn't been prepared for the one they were on to suddenly start like that. She glared at Flitton when he chuckled slightly and tried to contain the blush creeping onto her face. She walked on as if nothing had happened, determined not to be startled like that again.

Since the stair moved Flitton lead her a slightly roundabout way to the door they had been headed towards and soon Karen spotted a gargoyle standing in the hallway and knew they were there.

"Plumpton Pass." Flitton said and the gargoyle jumped aside. Karen became very excited again as they headed up the stairs. She was about to meet professor McGonagall. The real her! It was amazing to imagine, not only was she at Hogwarts but she would get to meet so many people she had known for so long and dreamt about meeting.

Before reaching the top voices began to be heard from the headmaster's office. An unfamiliar male voice was saying"…cannot work. You cannot let her in directly like this! It's unprecedented!"

Another voice, this one a female one which Karen assumed belonged to professor McGonagall, replied"This is an unprecedented situation, Luther, as you well know, and so unprecedented ways must be used to solve it. The minister himself has agreed to my methods. If you have a problem, you must take it up with him."

The man inside huffed and, just as Karen and Flitton reached the top, opened the door and stormed out. He almost crashed into the two of them but caught himself at the last moment and, after giving Karen a disdainful look, huffed once more and squeezed past them. The man looked kind of like a pig, Karen thought, with a large belly, round eyes and a slightly upturned nose. Her attention was quickly drawn away from the descending man as McGonagall spoke.

"Flitton, here you are. And young miss Makarov. Come in please. And please ignore anything you heard Mr. Coxley say. Complete dolt, that man." Karen stepped into professor McGonagall's office with a stifled giggle. She hadn't expected McGonagall to be the kind of person to call someone a dolt. Well, she seemed annoyed, so perhaps that was the reason. McGonagall looked almost exactly like Karen had imagined her. Tall, black hair with a few grey streaks, square spectacles, just the way she had been described, if a tad bit older. Karen would probably have been a little nervous around her if she didn't know her so well already; her expression was stern despite having just called this Coxley a dolt.

"I wholeheartedly agree, professor. I never did understand how he got his position." Flitton replied, closing the door behind them.

"What position?" Karen wondered out loud as she examined the room. The portraits of past headmasters were there and her eyes quickly found and rested on the one of Dumbledore. He looked back at her and smiled, blue eyes twinkling, and Karen had to blink back a few tears. Other than the portraits the room wasn't much like the way it had been when Dumbledore was headmaster. It was a lot neater, she thought, and didn't have any of his instruments around. It still had a large collection of books though and it looked rather nice. Karen especially liked the tartan print on the chair cushions and one table cloth.

"Mr. Coxley is the head of the Department of Magical Education." Flitton replied, bringing Karen back from her examination of the room.

"Well, moving on from that," McGonagall said, swooping around the head table and taking a seat. Flitton sat down on a chair opposite and after McGonagall nodded towards another chair Karen sat down as well. "You are aware, miss Makarov, that yours is a highly unusual situation. Never before has a student joined the school this late without any previous magical education. But as things have progressed this way we must take the situation as is. Now, first of all to the matter of your lodgings. As you cannot stay in the dormitories until you have been sorted I have arranged for you to stay in the hospital wing. I'm afraid this is the best we can offer for now if you are to remain in the school until terms begin."

Karen nodded. "I can stay there," she said, earning a small smile from McGonagall.

"Good. Second, the matter of your education. You will have to learn quite faster than we normally teach and a few of the less important chapters will have to be skipped. Here is a schedule I have prepared for your studies until terms begin." She handed Karen a parchment, which she accepted and looked over. She seemed to have today and tomorrow completely off, but after that there were classes every day. Most of the classes seemed to last a long time and she couldn't help but notice that some of the subjects were missing. Before she could ask, though, professor McGonagall explained;

"I'm afraid we'll have to begin with working on the subjects there as some of your teachers will not arrive back at school until terms begin. After they do you will receive a new schedule, which will depend on how much you have covered by then. You will have to take many evening lessons and some lessons you will attend with the first, second or third years, depending on where you are in each subject." Karen nodded again. So no potions, astronomy or flying until school started and charms wasn't on the schedule until two and a half weeks before school started.

"As for the matter of your school equipment, Mr. Flitton has volunteered to take you to purchase the items necessary for the first two years later today." At this Karen raised her hand. "Yes, miss Makarov?"

"Um… I don't have any wizard money." Karen felt herself blushing slightly and wondered whether this was what Harry had felt like when he told Hagrid the same thing. Then again, his parents had left him a fortune. Somehow she doubted she was that lucky. But maybe something…

"Strictly speaking, you do have a little money saved up. Your parents set up a small trust fund in your name when you were a child. However, this fund cannot be accessed until you come of age. I have sent a letter to Gringotts explaining the situation but goblins can be rather stubborn so accessing your money ahead of time may take a while. Until then, if your muggle parents cannot provide you with enough money for all of the equipment the school will lend you the rest." Karen nodded, wondering how much money the equipment for two years at Hogwarts cost. Her family wasn't poor, but they'd never be considered rich either. She'd need equipment for more years soon as well, so it was just as well that the school was willing to lend her some.

McGonagall told her some more about her schedule and explained that the free time she had for the next two days was for her to get used to the castle and to begin reading her books, **not** to play around. She also confirmed what Flitton had said about her being sorted along with the first years. She'd then be staying in the dorm room with the third years. McGonagall explained that she would be joining third rather than fourth year in order to make things easier for her, if she joined fourth there was almost no chance of her passing her O.W.L.'s and she would also have to be behind on all the electives, whereas if she joined third year she could work hard and try to finish at least the first two years in one year, if not more.

Finally McGonagall gave her the list of equipment for the second year as well and professor Flitton then led her out of her office and to the hospital wing. There Karen found her luggage waiting by one of the beds. Flitton told her he'd be back in an hour to take her shopping and then left her to accommodate herself.

* * *

A/N: Finally got her to Hogwarts :D Please spend a few moments to review, I'd love to know what you think of the story.


	5. Shopping in Diagon Alley

Karen didn't have much unpacking to do so before Flitton got back she had wandered down a few of the corridors around the hospital wing. She made sure she didn't go far in case she got lost or didn't make it back before Flitton came for her, but it was still thrilling and she decided to explore a lot better when she had time tomorrow. When Flitton finally came for her Karen felt she knew the immediate area around the hospital wing fairly well, it was easy to remember which hallway was which by memorising the paintings and suits of armours in them.

When Flitton came back for her he was dressed in dark blue wizard robes which suited him a lot better than the suit had. Karen followed him to the second floor (being extra careful with the stairs this time) and into what she supposed was Flitton's office. There he brought her to the fireplace and asked; "Do you know how to use floo powder?"

Karen grinned and told him she did. "But where are we going? Diagon Alley?" She guessed that was the right place, considering they were going shopping for her school things. Just the thought sent a shiver of excitement through her.

"That's right. You should arrive at the Leaky Cauldron by just specifying Diagon Alley. Here." He handed her a jar filled with silvery powder. Karen took a handful and, careful to take a deep breath first so she wouldn't swallow any ash, threw it into the fireplace, stepped in and said "Diagon Alley," as clearly as she could.

Going by floo powder wasn't the most comfortable way to travel, Karen decided, but it was a lot better than apparating. She stumbled and fell when she finally arrived but she was glad to see that she was clearly in a pub and not a creepy store. There weren't many people there just then but none of the ones who were seemed bothered by a person appearing from the fireplace so Karen was clearly in the right place.

A moment later Flitton stepped out of the fireplace behind her, just as she was standing up. He nodded a greeting to the bartender and then asked Karen to come with him out the back, which she eagerly did. Her eyes searched for the correct brick but didn't find it before Flitton tapped it. When he did though she didn't much care, she was too busy staring at the forming archway.

Karen knew exactly what to expect once on the other side of the archway and yet she felt incredible excitement, wonder and joy at seeing all of it. She understood why Harry had wanted four extra pairs of eyes, there seemed an endless amount of things to see here. Karen was soon spinning in circles as she walked, Flitton ended up actually grabbing her arm and leading her onwards so she wouldn't fall behind. He didn't go fast though. Not quite as slow as Karen would have liked but slow enough for her to be able to look around a bit while they walked.

Diagon Alley was less crowded than she had expected. Then again, it was currently June, not August, so the rush of people buying school products wasn't here yet. There were still quite a few witches and wizards walking around and Karen stared at them too. Old and young, all wearing robes and pointed hats in a multitude of colours. Karen felt strange to think that she would soon be wearing one too, black Hogwarts robes.

It took far too short a time, Karen thought, to buy most things on the list. She wished she could spend hours in most of the stores, examining everything. Flitton reminded her again and again that they needed to get the shopping done and she reluctantly continued, only to be just as caught up in the next store. She especially liked Flourish and Blotts. Karen wanted to learn everything she could about the wizarding world so she was interested in a lot more than just her schoolbooks. Flitton allowed her to buy her own copy of _Hogwarts: a History_ and _A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions_, but the latter he allowed only after finding out she already had a copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. He was surprised to hear she had copies of that, _Quidditch Through the Ages_ and _Tales of Beedle the Bard_. He couldn't fathom how she had gotten copies and wanted to examine them when they got back. Karen didn't really understand how that was different from her reading about Harry's life but Flitton explained that that was a part of her seer abilities, seeing things about a person's life. These were actual books so her abilities didn't account for her being able to read them.

Karen wanted to buy a lot more books but Flitton wouldn't allow her to spend more of her budget on them and assured her that the Hogwarts library would be open to her if she wanted to read more.

After hours of shopping the two of them had everything on the list except for a pet and, the most important part, a wand. Flitton told her he would let her buy a pet, which delighted Karen since she'd always wanted one. She considered getting an owl but then decided that she could just as well use one of the Hogwarts owls to mail her parents (she had never been much for birds even though owls had fascinated her since starting to read Harry Potter) and bought herself a red kitten instead. She knew immediately she wanted him when she went over to look at a small pen with a handful of kittens in it, this red one had come right up to her hand and meowed as he tried to climb up it to reach her. He cuddled close to her neck as soon as she picked him up and Karen was in love.

Then it was time to buy her a wand. Karen was practically bouncing with excitement as they headed for Ollivanders. Gringotts came into view on the way and Karen felt a little bit sad that she didn't get to go in there, if only to explore, but moments later she was far too caught up with thoughts about her new wand to worry too much about it.

Ollivanders Wand Shop was exactly like Karen had imagined it. Stacks of boxes containing wands reaching right up to the ceiling covered all the walls, there had to be thousands of them. The place was dimly lit and dusty and somehow even the air felt very old. Flitton and Karen were greeted by a man Karen did not recognize but she knew immediately that he was not the same Ollivander as had been there when Harry came. This man was younger, although she guessed he was at least forty, and looked more solid than she had pictured Ollivander.

When she asked he told her with a small smile that Garrick Ollivander had retired a few years ago due to his health. He still made wands occasionally, he simply did not manage the shop. He himself was Gerald Ollivander, son of Garrick father's brother. He had learnt wand making from Garrick Ollivander himself and had taken over the shop after Ollivander retired.

Karen felt a little bit sad she didn't get to meet the same Ollivander but he had been very old so she supposed it was inevitable. Mr. Ollivander measured her arm and soon he was fetching her boxes of wands to try. It wasn't long before Karen's arm was quite tired of swinging wands which weren't meant for her, but finally she found it. Hornbeam with unicorn hair, 10 1/4 inches, reasonably supple. Karen felt it the instant Mr. Ollivander handed her the wand, this was the one for her. She felt warm, like when sunlight shines on you on a cold day, and, without her even swinging the wand, the box it had been in floated slightly upwards.

"There's the one." Mr. Ollivander said with a smile. "We've had that one for a long time, I was beginning to wonder whether we'd ever find a matching owner. Garrick made it near the beginning of his career."

"So Mr. Ollivander… I mean the previous Mr. Ollivander, made it?" Karen asked. She felt slightly bad to be this much more excited for a wand from the previous Ollivander than the current one but she couldn't help herself.

"Indeed he did, lass." Mr. Ollivander replied. He didn't seem to mind her excitement at that, he simply looked satisfied to have found her a suitable wand.

Mr. Flitton paid for the wand and, after thanking Mr. Ollivander, the two of them left the store.

"Well, I believe that's everything you'll need for your first two years' worth of studying." Flitton stated as they began walking back down Diagon Alley.

"Can't we stay a little longer?" Karen asked, "Just to… look around a little bit more?" She looked hopefully at Flitton, who chuckled.

"I'm afraid we should get back. You'll want to explore Hogwarts a bit more I presume. And you must be getting hungry, we can find you something to eat back at the castle."

"Can't we eat here?" Karen asked in a feeble attempt to stay a few moments more.

"I suppose we could have lunch at the Leaky Cauldron." Flitton replied with a thoughtful smile. "We may as well. Come to think of it, I suppose you should also buy yourself some sweets. A small reward for the day's work."

Karen almost hugged him she was so happy. He lead her over to Sugarplum's Sweets Shop where he gave Karen a few knuts to spend on sweets. She wanted to try almost everything in the store but ended up with a sugar quill, a bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans, a few chocolate frogs and a liquorice wand. The two then headed back to the Leaky Cauldron where Flitton ordered them lunch.

"Why, hello Wineca!" A woman's voice suddenly said. Karen looked up from her food to find a plain, slightly chubby blonde woman who had come to their table.

"Afternoon Hannah." Flitton smiled at her. "It's been a while, how are you?"

"Oh, business as usual." Hannah replied. "What brings you to my pub? I thought you went back to Hogwarts after the news about… oh!" She looked at Karen with understanding. "This is her, then?"

"It is. Karen, this is Hannah. She's the landlady of the Leaky Cauldron."

Hannah smiled at her. "So you're the one who's taking away my husband's summer vacation, eh?" Hannah sounded pleasant despite the words so Karen knew she didn't mean them in an annoyed way. She also thought she had figured out who she was now.

"You're Hannah Abbott, aren't you?" She asked, then corrected herself, "I mean Longbottom. Hannah Longbottom."

Hannah's eyes widened slightly in surprise. "How'd you…?" She looked questioningly at Flitton, who explained;

"Miss Makarov has some extraordinary seer abilities. She's apparently seen everything about the school life of Harry Potter. Since you were in the same year, I'm assuming that's where the knowledge comes from." Karen nodded in confirmation.

"Well, that's a unique talent indeed." Hannah said. "I'll have to remember to warn Neville before he comes to teach you or he'll have quite the shock himself." She laughed slightly and Karen wasn't quite sure whether it was a nervous laugh or a pleasant one. She decided she liked Hannah anyhow, she seemed like a kind person and a good fit for Neville. She didn't say so though, she had already freaked Hannah out enough.

Flitton and Hannah chatted for a while and then she went back to work and the two of them finished their lunch. After that it was back to Hogwarts.

* * *

A/N: Sorry about how long this one took, was busy with graduation and my birthday and stuffs :)

Anywho, hope you enjoyed and remember that reviews feed the writer's soul ^^


	6. Exploring the Castle

Karen looked around the hospital wing and wondered where to start. She could go explore the castle some more, it was definitely something she could spend the rest of the day doing and still not be done. Or she could start reading some of her books, also something that could take up the rest of the day.

Karen was excited for both things, both would give her knowledge about this world she had always wanted to have. She sat on her bed and stared at her new trunk. She hadn't had one so, even though Flitton said her suitcase would work, he had bought one for her. It wasn't anything fancy, just an old green trunk they had gotten from a used items store. Karen loved it.

At the moment though she was more focused on what was _inside_ the trunk, i.e. her school things. She had organized everything once she got back and was now staring at it, wondering where to start.

'Well,' she thought as she sucked on her sugar quill, 'I have all of tomorrow too. I'm going to get to explore Hogwarts lots once my classes start. Then again, I'm going to be studying endlessly once they start, too.'

Karen sighed, flopping back on the bed. Loki, her cat, jumped out of the way, then tried to cuddle her neck and swat at her sugar quill at the same time. She supposed she could try flipping a coin, except she didn't have one. She did have a chocolate frog card though.

The first thing she had done after getting back was to open one. The frog had hopped onto her bed, where she had caught it and it behaved as she ate it. It was rather odd to eat what seemed like a living frog but it tasted delicious and chocolaty. Her card had been Cyprian Youdle, the only referee to die during a quidditch match. Karen remembered his name from _Quidditch Through the Ages_ and had spent a good few minutes watching him fly around on the card. She had considered opening more chocolate frogs but felt really full after lunch and decided to keep them until after dinner. She still hadn't been able to contain herself from at least trying the sugar quill and one of bertie bott's beans. It had tasted like strawberry ice cream.

Karen picked up the card and, deciding that if it landed with the picture up she would go explore, if the text side she would stay and read, flipped it awkwardly into the air. Loki jumped up at it, grabbing it from the air and started chewing on it.

"No, silly cat." Karen said, pulling him off the card. It now lay picture up on the bed. Karen smiled. The flipping thing had worked, she realised she wanted it to land picture side up.

And so Karen jumped off the bed, left her sugar quill on the nightstand and wandered off to explore, Loki trotting close behind her.

~i~i~i~

The castle was getting darker when Karen set out again after dinner. She had wandered around for a few hours before realising how hungry she was. Once she got back to the hospital wing she found a tray of food on the table, even a saucer of milk for Loki. She whispered thanks to the house elf she figured had brought the tray to her and, after eating, set out to explore some more.

Karen's exploring wasn't organised at all. She had wanted it to be at first, deciding to start with the first floor and work her way up, exploring downwards at some other point. She had quickly gotten lost on the first floor and, after finding some stairs and heading up them, found herself on the third. From there she had just gone with it, wandering wherever the hallways lead her.

The whole thing would be easier if she had a map, she decided, so as she went out again after dinner she brought a notebook and pencil with her. She had brought a few of those along despite knowing she would be using parchment, she should at least be allowed to take her own notes in a notebook if she wanted to.

Currently Karen was on the fifth floor, she thought. Her map wasn't coming along too well, she was too busy looking around to always remember to draw what she saw. Corridors were simple to draw though so she had gotten some parts done. Still, she knew she would have to make many more trips of exploring to make the map complete.

Karen was just examining an empty classroom when a voice behind her said; "Ooooh, who's you, then? Little girlie wandering all alone? Tis not safe to wander after dark alone."

Karen whirled around to find a small man floating in mid-air, in the doorway just behind her. "Peeves?" She asked, knowing it had to be him. She hadn't seen a ghost yet but she remembered they were silvery and transparent whereas Peeves looked quite solid and, most definitely, colourful.

"Little girlie knows ol' Peevesie's name, she does. But little girlie doesn't know magic! So slow they couldn't teach her till now." Peeves grinned and threw a piece of chalk at her. Karen wasn't sure where he'd gotten it from but it wasn't very nice. Then again, Peeves was never known to be nice.

"I am not slow, I was under a spell." Karen argued. She knew it was silly to argue with Peeves but she felt she had to say something. She wasn't sure how he knew about her either. Had the ghosts been informed of her arrival? She started to move towards him to get out of the classroom, if she went somewhere else maybe he wouldn't follow.

"Slowpoke! Enchanted slowpoke is still a dumb slowpoke!" Peeves screeched happily, flinging the door closed so she couldn't leave. "Little slowpokie, should know the rule, can't be out late, she'll be locked out of school!"

"Hey!" Karen yelled as Peeves threw more chalk pieces at her, "Let me out! It's not that late, I'm allowed to explore so let me out!" The door was locked and, to Karen's dismay, she had left her wand back at the hospital wing so she couldn't even try to use alohomora or other spells to get out.

"Peevesie warned girlie, tis not safe out so late! A night of detention for youuuuuu!" He made a rude noise and, after throwing one last chalk, backflipped out of the room, leaving Karen alone in the locked classroom.

~i~i~i~

Half an hour later Karen was beginning to despair. She was still locked in the classroom and unless Peeves had a change of heart there didn't seem to be any way for her to get out. She had tried calling after him but he hadn't come back. No one else had shown up either so Karen was completely alone. She wished she at least had Loki with her but he had fallen asleep while she was eating dinner and was probably still curled up in the hospital wing.

Karen looked around the room one more time, wishing she would spot something helpful she might have missed. The classroom was ordinary, just desks and chairs for students and one larger teacher's desk at the front with a blackboard behind it. There was a small bookshelf and a cupboard, in which Karen had found nothing useful, and one painting. The painting currently only showed an empty desk by a window, an open book lying on it and a bookshelf behind it. It was quite large and, as there was an empty chair by the desk, Karen guessed there was supposed to be a person on it. Where that person currently was, though, she had no idea. If only whoever it was would show up, they could maybe help her get out.

She also wondered where all the ghosts were. She knew there were plenty of them at Hogwarts yet she hadn't seen a single one while exploring. Maybe ghosts went somewhere else during the summer? She sighed. It was getting really late and she still had no idea how to get out.

Crossing to the windows of the classroom Karen opened one and peered out. She could see the lake, the forest and even Hagrid's hut in the distance. She hadn't thought of it before now but she really should go visit him, he'd definitely help her out with things. If only she had gone there earlier instead of around the castle, she wouldn't be in this mess now.

Back at the door Karen banged on it once more, yelling; "Hello! Can anyone hear me?"

"I can hear you." Karen jumped. The voice came from behind her and, turning around, she once more came face to face with a floating figure. Thankfully it wasn't Peeves this time, this man was clearly an ordinary ghost. Or should she say boy? She wasn't sure, he looked somewhere between 17 and 25 and Karen couldn't for the life of her figure out where on that scale he was. He was wearing wizard robes, not Hogwarts ones, and his eyes, despite having a slight mischievous glint, looked kind. His whole expression was soft, like his voice was, and Karen knew he would help her.

"Thank goodness. Peeves locked me in and I can't get out. Can you help me?" The ghost smiled.

"Of course. You must remember to watch out for Peeves, he does like to pull pranks so."

"I know, he just caught me by surprise." The ghost raised an eyebrow at her explanation but said nothing. "Anyways, can you go find someone? Filch or professor Flitton or something?"

The ghost's head tilted slightly to the side. "I was not aware you had met Filch yet. He is at a wedding today so he is not here."

"I haven't." Karen found herself blushing slightly. Of course, the ghost wouldn't know about her seer abilities so it probably sounded strange to him that she knew about Peeves and Filch. She tried to explain in a few words and understanding dawned in his eyes.

"I see. I presume you do not know myself, I did not interact overly with Mr. Potter." He bowed. "I am Kenan Metheven, at your service."

„Um... Karen Makarov." Karen attempted a curtsy, which made Kenan smile. In addition to his voice being soft it sounded sophisticated, like he might be an aristocrat from a long time ago. When Karen thought about it, his robes had some embroidery at the sleeves and hem.

"Now, on the matter of your escape. I could find Mr. Flitton for you, if you wish me to. Or…" The mischievous glint in Kenan's eyes seemed to grow stronger, "I can show you a way out for yourself."

* * *

A/N: I'd like to say thank you for the reveiws I got, they really made my day ^^ I hope you enjoy this chapter too.

Also, sorry if Peeves talks different from in the books, I had a terribly hard time trying to make him sound anything like it x.x Hagrid may sound odd too once I enter him, we don't have that accent in my country and I've never been good at writing them. I'll do my best though :)


	7. Hogwarts Secrets

Karen stared at Kenan, wondering what he meant. A way out for herself? But she had already been stuck there for over half an hour and she hadn't found any way to get out.

"What do you mean?" She asked, unable to puzzle it out.

"There is another way out of this classroom, although few know about it." Kenan smiled mysteriously. "Do you wish me to show you?"

Karen nodded eagerly and followed Kenan as he floated to the empty painting. "Behind here," he told her, "is a secret passageway. Horace will open it for you, if you are persuasive enough." Karen was just wondering who Horace was when Kenan shouted; "Horace! Stop munching on cakes and get back here!"

Karen stared from Kenan to the painting. The shouting had surprised her but it had also worked. A few moments later a fat man waddled into the painting, red faced and breathing heavily, and sank down into the chair. After catching his breath he glared at Karen and Kenan. "Can't a man have some tea in peace?" He asked, clearly annoyed.

"Horace likes to spend his time with Martha and Patrick in the painting in the hallway outside. It is of a tea party." Kenan explained to Karen, then turned back to Horace. "Horace, Karen here would like to gain access to your passageway."

Horace huffed. "Oh she would, would she? And why should I let you through, lass?" he glowered at Karen, who tried to make herself smaller under that stare.

"Um… because I'm locked in here and need a way out."

"Yes, you've been screaming about it for the past half hour. Disturbed our tea, it did." Karen gaped at the painting. The whole time there had been people in a painting just outside who heard her and still hadn't helped?

Kenan whispered to Karen; "You must simply know how to work Horace. See here: Horace," he raised his voice so Horace could hear, "You will let the girl through or I shall ask Mr. Paddington to rearrange your books again."

Horace looked more annoyed than ever. "You know how long it took me to put them right again last time? Took me ages, it did! You ain't doin that again, lad!"

"I shall, if you do not let her pass. I may ask him to spill ink on your papers as well." Kenan sounded firm, meeting Horace stare for stare. Horace grumbled about annoying ghosts and loud girls as the portrait swung outwards, revealing a neat square hole behind it.

"Wow." Karen said, grinning at Kenan. He made a sort of 'lady's first' gesture towards the hole and Karen climbed through. Behind it was a hallway, completely dark except for the light coming in through the hole, that swerved to the right into darkness. "I wonder whether this was on the Marauder's Map." Karen wondered out loud.

"Marauder's Map?" Kenan asked, floating next to her as the portrait closed, leaving them in complete darkness.

"Oh, it's this map four students made of Hogwarts. Harry's dad, actually, and his friends." She explained.

"I very much doubt it would be on that map, few people know of this passage. I myself know most who have passed through it. It is my favourite place, you see." Kenan smiled at her. It looked rather creepy in the dark when Karen couldn't see much other than Kenan's silvery figure. He floated forwards as he talked and Karen, after placing a hand on the wall so she wouldn't stumble in the darkness, followed.

"Why is that?" She asked as they walked; or in his case, floated.

"You will see." Kenan sounded amused, and perhaps happy to have someone to share the passageway with.

They had only walked for less than a minute when they came to what seemed to be a dead end, a wooden wall was in front of them. Kenan told Karen to knock on it and when she did it swung open. A fire blazed in a hearth on one wall, lighting up the small, circular room beyond what Karen now realized was the back of a painting. The room didn't have much in it, just a few shelves with a handful of books and some odd items and a small green couch in front of the fire. There were also five other paintings besides the one they had come in through, evenly spaced around the walls. Each painting showed a different room and, once the one they had come through closed, Karen saw that it showed the classroom she had just come from. She didn't recognize the places in the other paintings except for one, which was of a hallway on the second floor close to the grand staircase.

"This is amazing." Karen said, walking a turn around the room to examine each painting better. "Do all of them have hallways behind them that lead to where the painting shows?"

"They do." Kenan replied, smiling at her excitement. "All of them come out behind portraits except for those two," he pointed to two of the paintings, one showing a dark stone corridor with no windows which Karen guessed was in the dungeons, the other a lovely, sunshiny courtyard. Karen had wondered for a moment whether the paintings changed to show what was going on in the rooms too but the one with the courtyard disproved the theory, it was late evening now so the sun wouldn't be shining like that.

"And almost nobody knows about this place?" She picked up one of the items on the shelves, an odd looking box she didn't know what was.

"I have only shown it to one other who is currently a student." Kenan told her. Karen felt rather honoured that he was sharing this secret with her.

"Thank you for showing it to me. I guess it was lucky after all that Peeves locked me in there." She laughed to herself, sitting down on the couch.

"Oh, that would not have been enough. I showed you this secret way because you look as if though you will use it well. So many use the secret passageways only because they do not wish to walk a longer way. Such a dull use for them. I hope you will not disappoint me and be the same." Kenan's silvery ghost eyes studied her intently. Karen wondered what colour they had been when he was alive.

"I'll do my best." She said, although she wasn't sure how else she was going to use the passageways than for shortcuts. Then again, there was this room. She could definitely use that if she needed a quiet place for herself.

"Do you know many secret passageways around school?" Karen asked after a moment of silence, earning her a grin from Kenan.

"I believe I know most of them. One of the perks of being a ghost is that they are easier to find when you can pass through walls." Karen giggled. "I knew most while alive as well, though. Searching for new ones was a pastime of mine." If his eyes hadn't already been like misty silver Karen would have thought they went misty now, remembering the past.

"Was it a long time ago?"

"Oh yes, quite a while. Not so long as many other ghosts who reside here, most of them are older than I am. The house ghosts, for example, had all been here for a long time already when I was a student."

"Which house were you in?" Karen asked curiously.

He flashed her a grin. "Guess."

Karen thought for a moment. Kenan was friendly, kind and secretly mischievous. She didn't really know much more about him so far so she wasn't sure. "Um… Slytherin?" She decided the mischievousness could place him there. She also kind of associated aristocracy with Slytherin. Not like Kenan was snobbish about it or anything, he didn't even seem aware of the fact that he spoke a bit different from ordinary people or stood/floated a bit taller. Still, it was as good a guess as any.

"No, I was a Hufflepuff." Kenan said with a laugh. "It was not a bad guess though, the Sorting Hat considered placing me in Slytherin. Apparently I have some Slytherin slyness in me."

"Hufflepuff would have been my next guess." Karen told him with a smile.

"It is a good house. Perhaps you will join it as well."

"Maybe. I'm not sure where I'll go to be honest. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn't belong anywhere." Karen sighed at the thought of not belonging to any house. That would be the most awful thing she could imagine.

"Do not worry, Karen. You shall join a house and find it perfect for you." Kenan's words comforted her fears and she smiled at him again. "And now, I believe you may need to get some sleep. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow, and an even longer one after that."

Karen realised then that she was quite tired. She followed Kenan to the painting of the second floor corridor and, following his instructions to knock on the right side of the frame, found it opening up for her and leading her to the corridor. There she said her goodbyes to Kenan and it wasn't long before she was back in the hospital wing. Loki was still curled up on the bed and she lay down with him, dreaming of more adventures to come.

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A/N: My apologies for the lateness again. Kenan didn't want to behave x.x That and since I have a job now I'm more busy so honestly the updates might be this far apart from now on. Not like it was that far, just about a week. I'll keep writing this though, never worry about that ^^

Please review and tell me what you think :)


	8. First Class

A/N: I'd like to say I'm really sorry about this chapter being short and fillerish. My computer's being repaired (writing this on my sister's laptop) and I haven't had it for a week now x.x I'll hopefully get it back tomorrow or the day after and then I can write normally again. anyways, hope you still like the chapter :)

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Karen woke up the next day to the magical alarm clock Flitton had lent her and found breakfast on the bedside table. After eating she began to read and didn't stop until her lunch appeared on the next bed over. Probably a house elf had brought it while she was too busy reading to pay attention.

Everything in her books was just so interesting. Even the ones that were written in a very dull textbook way, such as Magical Theory, were still about interesting things so Karen found them a lot easier to read. By dinner time she had finished a few chapters in all of them, more in some than in others. She had also tried out a few spells. She knew a pile of them, of course, but she didn't really know any hand movements except swish and flicker and that one was harder to do right than it sounded, or at least Karen didn't succeed. She did manage lumos and nox, as well as accio and depulso. She wanted to try a few others she knew, such as reparo and incendio, but didn't have anything broken to repair and was a bit scared of setting something on fire if she tried incendio without fully knowing what she was doing. She did try a few random ones from her books though and succeeded in changing the colour of her sheets (they were now light blue) and to make one of the empty chocolate frog packs soft and rubbery.

On the whole the spells she read seemed simple enough, so far at least, and everything else was interesting. She read late into the night and, when she finally fell asleep, her dreams were filled with spells, magical creatures and people from her history book.

Then at last Karen's schoolwork began. She felt groggy when she woke up, she had stayed up reading so long she hadn't gotten enough sleep, but she quickly perked up when she remembered she was still at Hogwarts and was going to go to class today. She found her timetable and read for the hundredth time that her first class was Defence Against the Dark Arts. It started at 8:30 so she had plenty of time for breakfast, which once more waited for her on her bedside table.

After eating Karen changed into her school robes. They were still only black with no house emblem since she hadn't been sorted yet but Karen instantly loved them. She stared at herself in the mirror and couldn't stop grinning and thinking; _This is really happening!_

After a few moments of admiring her robes Karen gathered up her wand, which after the incident with Peeves she decided never to go anywhere without, and her bag, which she had already packed with the books she needed for her classes that day as well as parchment, ink, quills, notebooks and pencils.

It took Karen a while to find the right classroom but she had started out earlier than she needed to so she still managed to get there on time. The first thing she noticed when she peaked in through the door was the dragon skeleton hanging from the ceiling. She knew she was in the right place when she saw that. Flitton was also already there, doing something with some papers at the teacher's desk.

Karen felt extremely awkward arriving there all alone. She had never been in a class without having a bunch of other people there too, it seemed this was more private tutoring than a class. She took a deep breath, opened the door properly and walked in.

"Good morning, professor." Flitton looked up as she entered and smiled warmly.

"Good Morning, miss Makarov. Here, choose a seat." He gestured to the tables all over the classroom. Karen stared at them for a moment before walking to the front of the classroom and sitting down. It would be silly to sit anywhere else, she decided, since it was just her here.

"Now, I would like to start with a bit of an assessment, if you don't mind?" Karen shook her head to show that she didn't. She wasn't sure what kind of assessment he meant though until he picked up a stack of papers and brought them to her. _Oh_, she thought, _a test_.

"As you already have some knowledge of the material from your knowledge of Harry's life I decided this was the best way to find out what precisely you know." He smiled apologetically, probably having noticed Karen's disappointed look. "This is a basic examination from the first year material. Nothing too complicated, the real final examinations are more difficult. You can take all the time you need to finish it and if you don't know the answer to something, just skip it."

Karen spent the next hour going through the test. It turned out she didn't actually know that much about Defence Against the Dark Arts, the books had never covered much of the class activities. She knew a few things though, mostly spells, and some things she remembered from reading the textbook the day before.

Karen did learn one thing while taking the test though, a spell for removing ink stains. She had never written with a quill before and even though she got the hang of it fairly quickly she still managed to make a mess of some of her sentences in the beginning. Flitton noticed and came over to help her remove the stains, teaching her the simple spell which Karen gratefully mastered in a few moments.

Once she finished Flitton went over what she knew and, without seeming surprised at all that she knew so little, spent the rest of the lesson teaching her in what felt like a very ordinary class. They covered subjects from the first two chapters before Flitton wrapped up the lesson, saying Karen should probably have some lunch before her next class, which was History of Magic. As the lesson had been going on for three hours Karen agreed.

"Professor Flitton, will I always have to eat in the Hospital Wing?" Karen asked before leaving.

"Well, the Great Hall isn't really used when there's so few of us here. We teachers eat in our rooms or in the staff room and, since the Hospital Wing is your room now, that's where you eat. After all, if you were to eat in the Great Hall, where would you sit?"

Karen hadn't thought about that. It wasn't like it mattered which table she sat at since she wasn't sorted but… somehow it felt wrong to think about choosing a table. She couldn't even remember which table belonged to which house, which didn't help. Besides, seeing the Great Hall for the first time was one of the things she was supposed to do when she got sorted. As she headed back to the Hospital Wing to have her lunch Karen decided she would not go to the Great Hall even while exploring. Not until her sorting.


	9. Meeting Some 'Old' Friends

After a _very_ long History of Magic class followed by a Transfiguration class with McGonagall, which she taught Karen because the current transfiguration teacher would be unavailable for the summer, Karen felt like her brain was about to explode. Three hours in each subject with only an hour break for lunch _and_ homework from both Binns and McGonagall left even a student eager to learn extremely tired.

So when Karen got back to the Hospital wing she flopped down on her bed, cuddled Loki and genuinely considered taking a nap. Then she decided that might be a bad idea, there was a chance she wouldn't wake up till the next morning. So she forced herself to get up again and wondered what to do.

And then she remembered, she still hadn't been to see Hagrid! Suddenly Karen felt wide awake, all the tiredness swept away by the thought of meeting someone she loved so much. She set off at a jog down to the ground floor and out onto the grounds. Karen hadn't really explored the outside yet and now she regretted it, everything looked beautiful. It was a warm summer day and all the colours looked extra vibrant, bright green grass and sparkly blue lake.

She wondered as she walked how few students must have seen the school like this, everyone left before summer really came. It was an amazing thing to have the school almost all to herself like this. Still, Karen couldn't wait for fall. Having other students with her in classes would certainly make them a lot easier and it would bring the castle to life. She would also make some friends that way, hopefully, and she would finally get to know which house she belonged to. It would probably be awkward though, after all she was fourteen and was going to be sorted with the first years. Professor McGonagall would have to explain it to the students. Most likely she would be a complete outsider, everyone else had known each other for two years already! The thought scared Karen, but as she looked on to Hagrid's Hut her fear evaporated. It was a fear for a later time.

With the sun low on the sky Karen walked up to Hagrid's door and timidly knocked. Instantly a loud barking rose up. It sounded slightly higher pitched than she had expected from Fang, and when the door was opened she saw why. In front of her loomed the tall figure of Hagrid. She had known he was big but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. He probably looked a bit scary to people who didn't know him, especially with the shaggy black hair and beard, but Karen instantly broke out into a smile despite her eyes widening a bit at the sight of him. As for the barking, the dog behind Hagrid was most definitely not Fang. It was a large black and brown dog Karen thought was a Rottweiler, staring at her with dark brown eyes and trying to squeeze past Hagrid to sniff her.

"'ello. You must be Karen." Hagrid's beetle like eyes smiled at her as she was sure his mouth was doing under all that beard. "No, Taran, get down, boy." He pushed the dog back with one large hand. "He's harmless, really. Would yer like to come in? I'm Hagrid, by the way."

"I know." Karen said as she stepped into the small hut, trying to keep Taran from licking her face once he reached her. "I mean… well…" Karen fumbled with her words, how did you tell someone who had never met you that you had known them most of your life?

"Aye, the seer thing?" Hagrid asked as he closed the door behind her. "Professor McGonagall said something 'bout that. So yer know something 'bout me already, I s'pose."

"Yes!" Karen exclaimed gratefully. "I kind of know you really well, or at least I think so. I read everything through Harry's point of view but you were with him a lot so I got to know you through him."

"I see. Well, I shall just have to get to know yer then, so we'll be equal in that." Hagrid smiled at her and offered her one of his rock cakes. Karen accepted despite knowing what they were like and even tried to nibble it. She managed a small bite but left it alone after that as her teeth had started to hurt.

At first Karen felt a little bit awkward because she knew Hagrid didn't know her at all but he was so friendly that all awkwardness soon fell away. She learned that he was still the Care of Magical Creatures teacher and, after assuring him she would definitely be taking the class, that he still kept contact with Harry and the others. He told her they were doing well and that most of their kids were born already. Karen found it slightly strange to hear him talk about 'little Albus' and so on, but at the same time wonderful to know that things were exactly like she had read.

Hagrid also told her things she had not known about their lives after the war ended, such as that Harry had recently become the youngest head of the Auror Office and Hermione was working in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Hearing about their lives was thrilling, even though it was just simple stories about Fred jr. playing pranks on his sister and Teddy Lupin developing his metamorphmagus skills a lot recently; apparently he had a fondness for green hair lately and had mastered his skills enough to give his grandparents a fright sometimes by looking like some of his friends.

Karen was also sad to hear that Fang had died many years ago now. Hagrid had buried him out near the forest and gotten Taran three years ago to keep from being lonely. He also had Grawp for company. He was a lot bigger now but he lived in the forest and was a lot calmer. He could even talk close to properly, Hagrid said, and almost never picked people up without permission. He sometimes helped Hagrid out with his duties that had to do with the forest and Hagrid took the classes to see him when teaching them about giants. He promised to introduce him to Karen sometime when given a chance.

It was quite late when Karen left Hagrid's hut, later than she was supposed to be out, but she met no one on the way back to the Hospital Wing so she escaped a scolding. Besides, she would have gladly accepted one if that was the price for the time spent with Hagrid, he was wonderful company.

*i*i*i*i*

The next morning came and Karen sleepily headed to her Transfiguration lesson. It passed slowly but at the end Karen had succeeded in turning a match into a needle and was quite proud of herself. Then came the class she had been looking forwards to for that day, Herbology. It wasn't so much the herbology itself that made Karen so excited, it was the fact that she would be taught by Neville. She practically ran to the greenhouses after lunch and arrived, out of breath, ten minutes early for her class.

Once inside the first greenhouse she found that Neville wasn't there yet and so she wandered around a bit, examining the plants. She was careful not to touch any of them since she remembered quite well how dangerous some magical plants could be.

Karen turned around when she heard the door open behind her and stared at the man standing there. Round face, short dirty blonde hair, bucked teeth slightly visible. Yes, despite being an adult there was no doubt this was Neville Longbottom. He was wearing simple black robes with a faint red trim that reminded Karen of how she imagined the Gryffindor robes looked and she wondered whether he had had them fashioned after them.

"Good afternoon. I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long." Neville said as he walked over to her and put some books on a table on the far end of the greenhouse.

"Not really." Karen replied and, realising that she was staring, moved her gaze to one of the plants instead.

"Um… I heard from my wife that you have some seer abilities and so you may already know who I am." Neville said awkwardly.

"Yup, I know you." Karen smiled slightly at him. "You're one of my favourite people, actually." Neville blushed at that but tried to hide it with a cough and continued.

"Anyways, miss Makarov, I don't suppose you know anything about herbology from your um… ability?"

"Not much," Karen admitted, "I know a bit about Devil's Snare and Mandrakes and a few other plants but I'm not really sure what year most of what I know is taught in and I don't even know too much about the ones I recognize."

"Well, Devil's Snares are covered in the first year. We will just start with…" Neville, who sounded slightly awkward while talking at first, became the most talkative teacher Karen had ever had once he got started on plants. He was so enthusiastic about them and practically gleamed when Karen knew about something he was explaining. Since it was just the two of them it was more like a conversation than a class, although Neville did most of the talking. He made herbology sound a lot more interesting than Karen would have thought. They had one slightly awkward moment where Karen called him Neville instead of Professor Longbottom but since Karen quickly asked a question after it he began explaining in his enthusiastic way again and it was soon forgotten.

Karen left the class with a lot more interest in the subject and decided that Neville was definitely a favourite professor already, his enthusiasm was infectious and that passion for the subject made him a great teacher. Even though he had taught a bit longer than he was supposed to and given her a short essay as homework Karen didn't mind one bit and happily headed back to the castle for her next lesson.

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A/N: I have my laptop back, so yay :D

btw thanks to everyone who reviews, especially Mimzy who is awesome and reviews all the time. lots of love to you 3

And in reply to mr/miss anonymous: Makarov is a real name? O.o I just made something up that sounded fun. Sorry if it's not right culturally or whatever it is, I had no idea it was a real name. What language/country is that name from? If you ever read this please answer, I'm curious now.

Anyways, please review and tell me what you think of this chapter, next one will hopefully be up soon.


	10. Sorting Ceremony

The days passed and turned into weeks. Karen had lessons almost every day and a lot of her free time went into homework. The time that didn't go into that went into more exploration of the castle and grounds (she finished her map of all the places open to her at last after three weeks, although she was sure she was missing some things), visiting Hagrid or Kenan and practicing spells. Kenan was a great help with the spells portion, he had been a student so he had learnt most of the spells she was supposed to learn and gave her helpful hints so that soon Karen knew a lot of her charms despite not having had a single lesson from an actual teacher.

Karen also discovered to her delight that the Room of Requirements was still around and she used it as a place to practice spells she had been afraid to try elsewhere, such as incendio. She visited the school library as well and was amazed by the size of it. She found hundreds of books filled with interesting things about magic and couldn't help but to start reading through some of them, despite having plenty of schoolbooks to read. Despite most of the books being filled with information the ones that interested Karen the most at first were the fiction novels. Karen had never thought much about wizard fiction but she found there were plenty of those in the library as well. There was even a section dedicated to muggle fiction where she found some old friends, although most of the books were classics there were many she had read.

After two months at the school Karen had gotten used to life at Hogwarts, even though she knew it was all about to change soon. It first dawned on her that September was drawing nearer when McGonagall called her to her office to choose her electives. McGonagall told her that since electives began on the third year she would join her classmates in those classes at least. She would take flying lessons with the first years and Potions and Astronomy as well but she would continue special lessons in the other subjects instead of joining the classes except for certain lessons and the hope was that she would have at least finished first year by Christmas.

Karen chose Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. Care of Magical Creatures was an obvious choice but she went with Divination in the hope of learning some more about her seer abilities. Maybe she'd even be good at it due to that. At the very least it would be interesting, and it sounded a lot better than Arithmancy or Ancient Runes (she didn't even consider Muggle Studies as an option).

Karen was glad of it when September 1st came closer, as amazing as it was to have the castle mostly to herself it was getting quite dull not to have anyone but her teachers, Hagrid, Kenan and some other ghosts to talk to. She sent her parents letters all the time but it wasn't the same, she would be glad for more company. And at last it came.

On the morning of September 1st Karen woke up as early as she did when she had classes, although of course she had none that day. Excitement woke her and time passed far too slowly for her liking. She tried to focus on studying a bit more, she had already covered a whole term in most of her classes, but focusing was difficult. She went to the secret painting room, as she called it, and spent some time talking to Kenan, worrying about her sorting and how the other students would receive her. She had a knot in her stomach both from excitement and worry. She would finally get to see the Great Hall and at last know which house she belonged to, but she would also be awkwardly standing with a bunch of eleven year olds and then join third years in the dormitory. She was glad she would have Kenan as her friend no matter what but that alone wasn't enough to make the knot go away.

Finally Karen took to wandering impatiently up and down the stairs for something to do, amusing herself by the fact that Loki seemed to enjoy running after her. At last the sky darkened and Flitton came to fetch her.

Heart racing, Karen followed Flitton to a small room close to the doors of the Great Hall. He told her to wait there, that the students would be arriving soon and he would give her further instructions when he arrived with the first years. Then he left.

It probably wasn't more than ten minutes before Flitton came back, a bunch of nervous looking eleven year olds following close behind him, but to Karen it felt like an eternity. She listened to her own heartbeat grow louder as she watched what she could see of the students filing towards the school and then heard the chatter as the older students entered the Great Hall. When Flitton was there at last he held a little speech over the first years, pretty much the same one McGonagall had given when Harry came to the school. Then he said;

"Due to some highly unusual circumstances this young woman could not enter the school until now and will therefore be sorted with you. Please be polite. I shall be back in a little while to bring you all into the Great Hall for the Sorting Ceremony." Flitton left again and Karen shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of the curious eleven year olds.

Some of them whispered quietly to each other, Karen heard that three boys next to her were wondering what the sorting would be like, but one of them piped up; "Why couldn't you enter Hogwarts till now?"

Karen looked into cold grey eyes and was for a moment reminded of Draco Malfoy. But the child who had asked was a girl with chestnut brown hair. The only resemblance was the eyes and a smug I'm-better-than-you look. Most likely just a coincidence with the eyes and the look just a pureblood thing, Karen decided as she answered. "Um… there was a warding spell on me that stopped the school from finding me." She figured an honest answer was best.

"Why? Didn't your parents want you to go to school?"

"Um…" Karen felt highly uncomfortable being questioned like this but she knew everyone else would most likely ask the same questions so she clenched her jaw and decided that this way she would at least have covered all the first years. "My parents died in the war, they put up the ward to protect me and left me with a muggle family."

The girl who had asked the questions sneered. "So you were raised by muggles?" She asked, saying the word 'muggle' like it was a nasty thing she'd rather not mention. Karen heard one girl whisper to another, asking what a muggle was. Definitely a pureblood.

"Yes, I was raised by non-wizards. You have a problem with that?" She glared at the girl who just made a 'chi' sound.

"I guess you can't help where your parents left you. They should have found a better place though. At least you're among your own people now." Karen felt her face heat in anger and was about to snap something quite rude at the girl when Flitton came back.

"All right everyone, please follow me." Karen bit her tongue and followed the others out of the room and into the Great Hall. She was glad Flitton had arrived when he did or things might have ended badly.

The Great Hall was every bit as wonderful as Karen had imagined, and ten times more so. She didn't even notice the stares of the other students until later, the hall's beauty enchanted her so. Hundreds and hundreds of candles lit the entire hall and despite having gotten almost used to magic now Karen still couldn't help but want to wave her hands under and above them to make sure they were really floating. The night sky was clear and the stars shone brightly down on them. Karen could hardly believe there was a ceiling there at all.

She finally tore her eyes away from the ceiling and looked down at the Soring Hat, this old black thing sitting on a small wooden stool. It looked so ordinary compared to the rest of the things in the Great Hall Karen almost wanted to start looking around again but she knew what the hat was and so she looked at it closely and, a few moments later, it began its song.

_I know I do not look the best  
But judge me not on that,  
For in the school of Hogwarts  
I am the Sorting Hat._

_I will look into your mind  
To see where you belong  
Within the Hogwarts houses,  
For I am never wrong._

_Perhaps in Hufflepuff you'll find  
Your hard work will best show;  
Or in the house of Ravenclaw  
Where wits are never low;_

_In Gryffindor your kind may be  
Where they are brave and bold;  
Or yet in cunning Slytherin  
your ambitions will unfold._

_Those are the Hogwarts houses four  
Now which of them is yours?  
Try me on and I will open  
All of your mind's doors._

Once the rip on the hat closed Karen felt the silence in the room. She glanced around and this time she properly noticed the eyes of students and staff on her. It was easy to stare at her, she supposed, she was after all a lot taller than the eleven year olds. Everyone was probably wondering about her too. She knew McGonagall had said something to the students about her before she came in, she just didn't know what. Karen took a deep breath and found Hagrid at the staff table, seeing his smile calmed her a bit.

The row of students who went before Karen slowly got shorter. She noticed the sneering pureblood girl, Claryssa Bole, was sorted into Slytherin without any hesitation. Finally Flitton called out; "Makarov, Karen."

Heart pounding and ears buzzing Karen walked up to the stool and put on the Sorting Hat.

"_Well well, this is unusual. It's been a long time since I've been through the mind of someone above eleven years old. Let's see now…"_

Karen's mind perked up at that. There had been other students who had joined before eleven?

The hat's whispering voice laughed in her ear, having, of course, heard the question. _"There have been others, yes, but none since the system was established. Back when the school was new the rules were different. Now, you certainly have a curious mind and logical, very good for a Ravenclaw. There's also loyalty in you, some fierceness with it. And kindness, yes. Definitely a good match for Hufflepuff as well. But where to put you…"_

Karen had known it would be a choice between those two but she had no idea which was a better fit. She knew she could ask the hat to place her in one and he would, but she liked both houses and didn't mind being in either so she remained quiet.

The hat continued its whispers of the features he found in her mind for what felt like an eternity until, at last, he shouted:

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A/N: Cliffhanger! Sorryyyy, but I felt like this story needed some suspense at least xP I hope you all like this chapter, I'll try to get the next part finished soon (because I know waiting after a cliffie sucks). And I'm sorry about the shortness of the Sorting Hat song thing, poetry is really not my thing x.x

Also, in reply to The Cute One: I haven't really decided which subjects to make her good at yet (although I can tell you it won't be History of Magic XP). Hopefully I'll figure it out now that the school year is starting for real. As for the potions teacher, I'm going with Slughorn. I prefer going with as many original teachers as I can, although with how old many of them would be that's kind of impossible for some. I considered having a new potions teacher since Slughorn would be at least 88 when Karen went there (this is supposed to happen in 2008 btw, I wanted it to be long enough since the Battle of Hogwarts but also not have Teddy in yet) and he does seem like the type to retire to comfort in his old age but it's easier for me to keep him, at least for now. If I continue this over to the next school year though I very well might have Slughorn retire and bring in a new teacher.

Please feel free to ask me questions in the reviews, I'll answer all that I can. I also love just hearing what you thought about the chapters, all of you who review are awesome ^^ Anywho, I'm off to write some more. Until next time.


	11. Explaining to the House Mates

"RAVENCLAW!"

Karen felt a smile spread on her face. She actually belonged to a Hogwarts house! She was a Ravenclaw! With shaking hands Karen took off the hat and went to sit over at the Ravenclaw table, barely noticing the cheering. She figured she would have to sit with the first years but as soon as she approached a petit third year boy with curly blond hair moved to make room for her between him and a brunette with her short-ish hair tied up in pigtails. Karen gratefully sat down and then cheered with the other Ravenclaws as they got more students.

Finally the last student was sorted. After Elody Wulfnoth ran off to join the Hufflepuffs the Sorting Hat was removed and McGonagall stood up. "Good evening. I welcome all of you to Hogwarts, whether you are returning or are here for the first time. I hope you all enjoy the festivities. Thank you."

With that McGonagall sat back down and the food appeared. Karen had known it was going to happen but still she couldn't help but gasp. There was so much of it! She immediately filled her plate with as much as she could of the delicious looking food and began eating. She also glanced around at the people sitting with her. When she sat down there had been too much cheering for the Sorting but now they had a chance to talk.

"So um… Karen, why couldn't you join the school sooner?" This was said by the blond boy next to Karen. She looked into his light grey eyes and felt like she could drown in them, they looked smoky and almost as if there was something swirling inside them. They made Karen think of two small pensives that she could fall into. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to," the boy added, "if it's awkward or anything. I'm Mellyn by the way, Mellyn Polglase." Mellyn's voice reminded Karen of the way she imagined Luna sounded, sort of distant and dreamy.

Silence had fallen around them, Mellyn clearly wasn't the only one wondering. Karen shifted uncomfortably from all the attention but she knew she had to explain sooner or later.

"What did professor McGonagall say about me?"

"Just that due to some special circumstances you couldn't attend school until now." Said the brunette on Karen's other side.

"She told us you would be joining the third year but also take lessons with first and second years, and to treat you nicely." Mellyn added.

"Well… apparently my parents were worried about me during the war so they put me up for adoption with some muggles. They put some sort of warding spell on me so nobody could find me, not even Hogwarts, and… well, then they never came back for me." It seemed like the whole Ravenclaw table was listening now and Karen could hear those sitting further away from her having her words repeated to them by those who sat closer.

"So you didn't even know you were a witch till now?" Asked a dark skinned boy sitting opposite her, brown eyes staring directly into hers.

"No. I mean… well I learnt about it at the end of June. That's when the warding spell went away."

"And you knew nothing about Hogwarts or magic before then, like a muggle born?" An older girl asked.

"Well… I…" Karen didn't really know how to explain the seer thing, she didn't exactly understand it herself. "I did, but I didn't. I mean… professor McGonagall says I have seer abilities and since I was a kid I read this book series about Harry Potter, except I thought it was just a book series but apparently it's all real and I was reading stuff that really happened." Karen closed her eyes after blurting all of that out, hoping some of it had been understandable despite how fast she had spoken.

"Wow." She heard a voice say.

"So you like, read about the past?"

"That's so cool!"

"Can you tell stuff about the future too?"

"Do you know all sorts of stuff about Harry Potter then?"

"Did you read about anything else that was real?"

Karen felt herself blushing from all the attention as she was bombarded with question after question. Most of them she didn't know the answer to. Finally an older boy with a prefect badge said; "Come on now, leave the poor girl alone. You guys are making her uncomfortable." Karen looked gratefully at the prefect, who smiled kindly at her, and the questions died down.

Karen felt a lot more comfortable when regular chatting began. She talked with Edyta, the brunette, about the electives and Poliver, the boy opposite her, about one of the fiction series she had read. He recommended her a few others which she promised to check out. Mellyn, Karen discovered, was a bit odd, even for a Ravenclaw. He had a huge bug collection and liked to study them, magical or not. And he was, like Luna, a bit ditzy and spaced out a lot. Karen liked him.

Most of the Ravenclaws were more than just people who liked studying, too. All of Karen's worry about not fitting in there because she didn't really enjoy studying unless it was something she was passionate about evaporated quickly, most of the Ravenclaws were the same. There were some, of course, who just loved learning about everything, but most of them seemed to have a passion for specific subjects, sometimes odd ones.

The dinner was over far too quickly in Karen's opinion, she would have liked to sit and chat all night. She wouldn't have been able to eat another bite of food though, when dessert came she already felt quite full and after it she felt she could practically collapse. The time came when dessert disappeared as well and McGonagall announced that they should all head to their dormitories now. Karen ended up following some of the people she had been talking to rather than join the first years following a prefect and in that way she found herself at the door to the Ravenclaw common room.

Poliver knocked with the bronze, eagle shaped knocker and the knocker asked; 'A very poor yet healthy man meets a rich yet very ill man. Which of the two is happier?'

They all glanced at each other. One boy said; "I'd assume the healthy man would be happier, but I think that's the wrong answer." A few people nodded.

"I think happiness can't be measured like that. Or measured at all, really." Poliver said, looking at the knocker for confirmation.

"You are correct, well done." The knocker said in its musical voice and the door opened, letting them inside.

Karen was instantly in love with the Ravenclaw common room. She had read about what it looked like already of course but now that she was there she could really feel how comfortable it was. The very air smelled of old books, a smell Karen adored, and she felt like she could feel the softness of the carpet through her shoes. She smiled as happiness tingled through her. No more hospital wing, this was her new home.

* * *

A/N: So, did you expect that? I was a bit torn between the houses but finally decided on Ravenclaw. Also, sorry this took a bit longer than I meant it to. I swear I was going to finish the chapter yesterday but I got sick and it's rather hard to write proper when your stomach is trying to kill you x.x I'm all better now though so of course I hurried up and finished this for you guys :) I hope you all like it, please leave me a review and tell me if you think it was the right choice.

In answer to _Lumpy Human Space Princess_: Of course I joined Pottermore, I was one of those who got beta testing and got in early :D And I'm in Ravenclaw too! *cough*totally not the only reason I chose it for Karen*cough* ^^ I'm MistWatch78 on there if you or anyone else wants to add me. I'm not on much except when new content appears but I can always do with more friends :)


	12. Second First Day

Karen climbed the stairway to the girl's dormitory and entered the door for the third years. Inside there were five beds, all with blue covers, and by one of them she found her green trunk. Loki was nowhere to be seen though and she wondered whether he might still be in the Hospital Wing, perhaps wondering where she was. He was a cat though and cats could take care of themselves, at least for one night.

Inside the dormitory were already two girls when Karen entered with Edyta, a girl with honey blond hair Karen didn't remember seeing before and a dark haired one with large blue eyes Karen remembered from the table, although she didn't know her name. Edyta quickly introduced them though, the blond one was Emily Michigan and the dark haired one was Jillian Lee. They were soon joined by Raymona Ramirez, a pretty Hispanic girl with beautiful long brown hair.

The other girls practically squeaked as they hugged and got caught up with what the others had been up to that summer. Karen felt a bit left out but she supposed that was to be expected, these girls had been friends for two years already and she had just met them. They all seemed nice though and they did ask about her summer as well, which she told them had mostly been spent studying. They were amazed when they heard she had been alone at Hogwarts with some of the teachers over the summer and pitied her that she had had to spend the whole time studying to catch up. They understood when she said it had been fun though, something Karen wasn't sure people from other houses would understand too well.

After about half an hour of chatting Karen decided it was time to go to sleep. She left the other girls to continue catching up and climbed into her own bed. It was wonderfully soft and she fell asleep easily while listening to the wind whistle around the windows and the low chatter of the other girls.

~i~i~i~

The next morning Karen woke up with the others to go to her first class as an official Hogwarts student. Of course breakfast came first and so Karen headed downstairs with a group of other Ravenclaws. She took a seat between Poliver and Mellyn and was soon dragged into conversation with Poliver and a girl named Cheryl about the book series she had been reading. The two were incredibly enthusiastic about the story and argued good naturedly about why such and such had happened and who was a more interesting character and so on.

Mellyn hadn't read the books so he didn't join the conversation but after the post arrived Karen found her attention switching between him and the previous conversation. She had stared in amazement as hundreds of owls swooped in, dropping parcels and letters here and there in front of students. She herself had received a letter from her parents that included the permission slip for the visits to Hogsmede. But she was more interested in Mellyn's post, which was a copy of the Quibbler. She hadn't known it was still being published, although it wasn't something to be surprised about. It seemed to have returned to the way it was before the war, all the articles Karen read above Mellyn's shoulder sounded slightly odd, but in a fascinating and slightly funny way.

She also got to read over the headlines of someone's Daily Prophet, which sounded more like real news. It wasn't terribly interesting though, Karen had never been much for newspapers and as there wasn't a war to keep up with or any news about people she knew she quickly passed the paper back.

After breakfast it was finally time for class. Karen's first class was one she had been looking forwards to a lot, Care of Magical Creatures. She was glad her first class with others would be with not only the third years but also with Hagrid. The Ravenclaws were joined by the Hufflepuffs for this class and slowly students filed outside to Hagrid's Hut.

"Say, was there anyone who figured out how to read the textbook?" Karen heard one of the Hufflepuff boys ask when she got there. The Monster Book of Monsters was still being taught but Karen had had no trouble with it, seeing as she already knew how to handle it. A few people muttered their agreements that they had no idea how to read it without having their hands chewed off.

"Um… you have to stroke its spine." Karen offered timidly.

"You what?" Emily asked, looking horrified.

"Stroke its spine." Karen repeated a bit louder. "It behaves itself if you just stroke its spine."

"Really?" A boy asked. "How'd you figure that out?"

"Um…" Karen blushed, not feeling like getting into the seer thing again just then.

"I knew that too." Mellyn suddenly said absentmindedly. "My brother told me when he gave me his old copy. He's a sixth year now."

The attention shifted away from Karen and soon everyone was trying this on their books. Groans of 'how the heck were we supposed to figure that out?' rose as the books opened smoothly in peoples' hands and Karen cast Mellyn a grateful look, although he didn't seem to notice it as he was inspecting a beetle on a nearby bush.

"Mornin' class!" Came Hagrid's booming voice. "I've got a real treat for yeh today. Took me ages to convince them to come this far out for us. Everyone here? Right then, follow me!" The class followed Hagrid up to the outskirt of the Forbidden Forest, where a wonderful sight awaited them. Dozens of fairies flittered in and out of the trees. Karen was so amazed she wasn't even sad about not getting to see hippogriffs in her first class. Hagrid had probably needed to tone it down, for the first lesson at least, after what happened with Malfoy she guessed.

The fairies were beautiful. Small and human-like with large transparent wings similar to insect wings (something Mellyn brightened considerably at noticing, Karen saw), they seemed excited to see the students and fluttered around them while making a high-pitched buzzing noise.

"Aren't they lovely? Vain little creatures, they like how yer admirin' them. Not very intelligent but they understand us some." Hagrid went on to explain more things about fairies as the creatures wove their way between students, sometimes even tugging at their hair or landing on their hands.

Karen felt exhilarated as she listened to Hagrid and examined a particularly lovely fairy which had landed on her outstretched palm. Mellyn brought out some parchment and began sketching her, muttering about how her wings looked like a mix of the wings of a Black-tailed Skimmer and a Downy Emerald dragonfly. Karen had no idea what those particular dragonflies looked like, but she agreed that the wings on this one did resemble those of a dragonfly. The fairy giggled and posed for Mellyn, stretching her wings out so he could see them better.

After the lesson Karen parted ways with her classmates and headed alone to the herbology greenhouses where she had a private lesson with Neville until lunch. His lessons were ones she always looked forwards to and she was glad she got to keep taking at least some private ones, his lectures seemed to her to work better one on one.

When she got there Neville proudly announced to her that she had received an O on the exam she had taken a week earlier. He then proceeded to tell her everything there was to know about Alihotsy, a tree whose leaves can cause hysteria and incontrollable laughter. He even offered to let her try the effect if she wanted, since he had the antidote with him, but Karen politely refused. She'd rather not be forced to laugh like a maniac by a plant in class, even if it was in the name of science. Instead Neville described the effects to her; he said it was similar to being forcefully tickled until you couldn't stop laughing, except without the tickling part.

Then it was time for lunch. Karen flopped down at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall and continued her reading of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi _while she ate, making notes by the Alihotsy of things Neville had told her that weren't in there and underlining a few things that sounded likely to be on tests.

Karen didn't usually scribble in her schoolbooks more than to maybe underline a few things but she had found it impossible not to after starting Hogwarts. The teachers said a whole bunch of things that weren't in the books or weren't explained very well at all and there was also so much stuff that was more action than book-studies and Karen felt compelled to note down how to do the action stuff. She made sure only to do it in her own copies though, Madam Pince would surely kill her if she did anything to the library books. Pince had returned with the rest of the staff, before now Karen had always needed to have Flitton let her into the library. Except for one time when she went with Kenan through a secret passageway. She hadn't touched anything but books from the muggle section that time though, Kenan had warned her Madam Pince put a hex on most of the library for when she was away which was deactivated by opening the main doors. He had barely escaped when using that passageway at night sometime, he said, so Karen hadn't wanted to risk it, especially when she was the only student in the school.

After lunch Karen joined the first years for a History of Magic lesson. Binns had purposefully started teaching her about a period they normally went into after the Christmas break first so she could join the first years in classes before the break and the second years after it. The class was dull, as usual, and Karen found herself mostly doodling on her parchment and watching the other students. She found it kind of adorable how some of the first years tried desperately (and failed) to pay attention to Binns the entire time.

When classes were finally over for the day at about 3:30 Karen headed back to the common room to rest. She herself wasn't done, she had a lesson with Flitton after dinner, but she intended to use her free time to relax as much as she could. After finding Loki wandering the hallways around the Hospital Wing she found a nervous first year girl at the entrance to the common room and helped her inside. The knocker had asked her an easy one; 'How can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday or Sunday?' but the poor girl had completely blanked and looked on the verge of tears when Karen came up. She looked immensely relieved when Karen gave the correct answer (yesterday, today and tomorrow) and together the two of them entered the common room.

* * *

A/N: Hiya :) Sorry about how long that one took, I got a bit blank on what to write. But I'm not here to give excuses, just update ^^ It might be a while until I write more though since I'm going to Norway next Wednesday and will be there for one and a half week. Maybe I'll manage to write something before then, I make no promises though.

Anywho, what do you think? Since I wasn't sure where to go plot wise for now I decided to just go with school. I quite like writing about the classes, even if it's just a little bit, but if you guys find it boring I'll stop. Please leave a review and tell me what you think :)

Oh, and also, a while ago The Cute One left a review reminding me that Harry sometimes comes to teach DADA classes and I definitely want to make that happen at some point. But I've been having trouble thinking up what Karen should say to him, so I'm asking for your help. My friend suggested something that I like but I'm not 100% sure I'll go with that so, what I'm asking you is: What would you ask/say to Harry if you met him? Remember, Karen already knows stuff about what happened to people after from Hagrid so she doesn't need to ask that (feel free to also let me know if there's anything specific there you'd like me to have Hagrid tell her, I can throw that in for you ;)). She might ask about reasons for things though since obviously Hagrid doesn't know what Harry thinks, just what he does. Anyways, what would you say?

Now, in reply:

Keira-22: Thank you for saying you like the story! And yes, Luna did have twins, Lorcan and Lysander ^^ I think you may have misunderstood something though, I'm purposefully not going to include any of their kids. This is supposed to take place before their kids are old enough to go to Hogwarts since I want this to be a story about Karen, not a second generation story. Mellyn isn't Luna's son, he's not even related to her (that I know of anyways, he could be a distant cousing or something though, characters tend to keep secrets like that sometimes ;P), he just reminds Karen of Luna. I made him slightly similar on purpose since Luna's one of my fav characters :)

Allrighty, sorry about the long text after the story here. See you in the next chapter ^^


	13. Divination Class

Two days later Karen walked up to the Divination classroom. She was chatting with Mariah, a third year Hufflepuff girl she met the day before. They had instantly clicked, Mariah's perkiness and talkativity made up for any shyness Karen had, and Karen was delighted when she found out they were in the same Divination class. She was also wondering whether to ask professor Trelawney if she could explain some things about her seer abilities, which was what she was talking to Mariah about just then.

"She's a seer herself, so she'll probably know lots." Mariah said reassuringly.

"Yeah but, she's honestly not a very good one." Karen told her with a grimace. "And besides, no one's ever had their abilities suppressed like mine were, I think. I'm not even sure anyone's ever seen as much as I did. At least, what I know about seers is all prophecies and stuff."

"Wouldn't it be funny if you started spouting those?" Mariah laughed. "Suddenly go all stiff and speak in rhyme and stuff!" Karen laughed at the image too. But she was still slightly worried about her chances of getting answers from Trelawney when they entered the classroom.

It looked just like Karen had pictured it. Small round tables crammed everywhere, dim red light, really warm with a lot of teacups, crystal balls, card decks and other divination looking things crammed on shelves. She and Mariah were about to sit down at a table with a Gryffindor boy Karen didn't know when she heard a gasp from somewhere in the room. Most of the students must have heard it because they all turned as she did towards the sound. There stood Trelawney's thin frame, eyes glittering under her glasses. Her endless amount of rings, bracelets and necklaces clinked as she took a step forwards, directly towards Karen.

"Asta?" Trelawney asked, eyes wide. Her hand reached out towards Karen, who instinctively took a step back. Trelawney looked creepy, staring at her with her dark green eyes magnified by her glasses.

"P…professor?" She managed lamely, wondering why the attention. She got enough of it from the students, not to mention knowing glances from her teachers. But no one had acted like this towards her so far. And who or what was Asta?

Professor Trelawney shook her head suddenly, like she was snapping out of a memory. "No. No, of course not." She muttered, still glancing at Karen. "I'm sorry, child. You just look so much like your mother. Same features all around." The last part was a mutter again, but Karen had straightened at the mention of her birth mother.

"You knew my birth mother?" She asked, oblivious to the stares and whispers from everywhere in the room.

"Asta? Oh yes, we were great friends. Met at the Seer convention when we were young. Seers often bond with each other." She gave Karen a smile and a look that said she was sure they would bond as well. Karen wouldn't be so sure about that. Trelawney seemed to realise then that they weren't alone. Most of the class was already there, all of them looking at the two of them. "Yes, well. Welcome to Divination class. My name is Professor Trelawney."

Trelawney's voice took on a softer, more mystical tone as she introduced herself and her class. Karen reluctantly sat down with Mariah, realising she wouldn't get much out of Trelawney now. She barely listened at all during class, it was mostly silly anyways and despite her seer abilities she saw nothing in her tea dregs. Karen didn't want to wait any longer than necessary though so directly after class she told Mariah that she'd see her later and went up to the professor again.

"Um… Professor Trelawney?" Karen asked, slightly hesitantly. Despite having thought about it during the whole class she found herself not quite sure what to ask. What was it exactly that she wanted to know about her birth mother?

"Ah, my dear child, Karen, is it not? Yes, come, come. Sit." Trelawney indicated one of the armchairs around a table near the middle of the classroom and brought her more tea once she sat down. "You wish to hear about your mother." Trelawney said it in a mystical tone, like this was her reading Karen's mind. Karen groaned inwardly, but nodded. "Your mother and I were great friends when we were young. It was terribly upsetting when I heard of her untimely demise." Despite the theatrical way Trelawney spoke Karen couldn't help but notice a slight pause before the words 'untimely demise' and based on how shaken up Trelawney had been at the start of the class she figured they really had been friends.

"Yeah, well…" Karen thought for a moment. Did she really want to know things about her birth mother after all? She had a mother already, this was a woman she hadn't even known existed until a few months ago. But she found that she did want to know. If only for the fact that if she knew more about her she might be able to figure out why she had left her.

"Did you know her when she had me?" Karen decided this was a good place to start. Maybe Trelawney even knew something about the reasons for all of this.

"We were friends still, of course! But the war, oh the war prevented us from seeing each other I'm afraid. Everyone was so busy, so many terrible things were happening. I got an owl about your birth from her, brightened the gloom for a while, that did. But I never saw you, no. Only received the news one day. Disappeared, believed dead. Never seen again." Trelawney's theatrics had faded as she spoke and at the end she was on the verge of tears. Karen felt bad for her. It seemed like Trelawney and her birth mother had been very close.

"So um… what was she like?" Karen felt lame for not being able to comfort Trelawney but wasn't sure what she could do, so she opted for bringing her to thoughts of happier times with her birth mother.

"Like? Oh, Asta was a wonderful person! Very spirited, had that Nordic fierceness about her. Stubborn as a mule once she made up her mind about something. And kind, very kind. Had a strong sense of righteousness, that woman. Would have been a Hufflepuff, had she gone here, no doubt."

"She didn't go to Hogwarts?" Karen hadn't thought about it before but of course it made sense. Flitton had told her she was from the north, Karen simply hadn't thought about how far north that meant.

"No, my dear, no. Your mother was from Norway, you know. She didn't move here until she met your father. Very much in love, those two." Trelawney sighed wistfully. "But no, your mother went to Durmstrang. Much closer to home for her."

Karen nodded and listened as Trelawney told her stories of the two of them. Her birth mother sounded like a strong willed, kind woman and Karen got the feeling Trelawney had looked up to her. She also learnt that her birth father had been named Thomas. He had been a student at Hogwarts, a Ravenclaw like herself, and loved inventing spells or tweaking them for new purposes. He had been good with languages as well and learnt Norwegian fluently. That was how they met, Trelawney told her. He had been studying spells from different countries, comparing strengths of similar spells with different origins and such, and Asta had become his tutor in Norwegian.

Karen found herself almost reluctant to leave when the bells rang to signal the next class to be over. They had talked for almost an hour. Or rather, Trelawney had talked and Karen shot in a question every once in a while. But she had learned a whole lot about her birth parents. She still didn't know why they hadn't come back for her but she felt she understood better their decision to leave her somewhere safe. And if they had gone somewhere into hiding, Karen now knew, it was most likely to be Norway.

With her mind buzzing from the new information Karen headed down to the dungeons for her potions lesson with Professor Slughorn.

* * *

A/N: Hi everyone!

So I said I'd be gone for two weeks and it's been a month since, sorry about that. Kind of got inspiration for another story of mine when I got back and have been working on that.

But anywho, I'm back to Karen now. How did you like this chapter? Reviews feed a writer's soul ^^

And also, an extra thank you to Lumpy/Bacon (I see you changed your name :P) for being the only one to review last time. You're awesome and I wuv you *hugs*

I'm also repeating my question since no one answered it: What would you ask/say to Harry if you met him (knowing things about life post the books from Hagrid, btw)? And of course, if you're interested in any particular info Karen could get from Hagrid, feel free to ask me and I'll try to work it in :)

Until next time (which will be sooner than a month, I promise)!


	14. Flying Lessons

That afternoon Karen's head felt close to bursting from all the information. Her class with Slughorn had been a long one. Karen had done her best to focus, putting the information about her birth parents aside, and had eventually lost herself in potion making. Note taking, really, as Slughorn had taught them about various ingredients and methodology during this first lesson rather than have them make an actual potion. That would come next time, he said. He had also been sizing her up, Karen was sure, and she half expected an invitation to a Slug Club meeting then and there. Probably he hadn't started those yet, though, and she hadn't gotten anything other than homework.

Karen half wished she had a time turner as she walked over to the training grounds for her first flying lesson. Not so much because she wanted to take more classes faster, her head already felt crammed from what she was taking now, but rather in order to get all that homework done.

Still, she was excited about flying. Karen wasn't a very athletic person but the concept of flying had to excite anyone who wasn't afraid of heights, she was sure. And despite not being into sports, what was there not to love about quidditch?

The weather was lovely, only a slight breeze stirred her robes as Karen walked with the Ravenclaw first years to where a bunch of other first years already stood, waiting for Madam Hooch. Karen groaned inwardly when she saw that the Ravenclaws were taking this class with the Slytherins, mostly because this meant she had to spend a class each week with the bratty pure blood girl from the Sorting. No sooner was she there, saying hi to the girl she had helped get into the common room the first day, than she heard a not-so-quiet whisper about how embarrassing it must be for her to take classes with the first years. She took a deep breath and somehow managed to ignore them until Madam Hooch arrived.

The lesson went smoothly. Just as it had been for Harry, broomsticks were brought and Madam Hooch taught them the very basics of getting on the broom, hovering for a few moments and coming back down. Fortunately there was no incident like there had been with Neville. Karen worried a little bit when the girl she had helped into the Ravenclaw common room, Sarah, shook from nervousness and went a bit too high but she managed to steady herself and get back down safely.

After the lesson, just as Karen was about to leave, she heard the Slytherin girl, Claryssa Bole, commenting rather loudly about Sarah's flying.

"…so obviously a muggle-born. It's not like it's very hard. I guess true wizards are just more skilled than people like her." Karen turned around, angry. Bole hadn't used the word mudblood yet but it was implied. Sarah stood, quaking and on the verge of tears, close by with three other first years. One of them looked like he was about to say something in her defence but Karen beat him to it.

"Of course, it's very easy to be good at something you've already learnt how to do, isn't it?" She spat. "Ex-quidditch player daddy decide to teach you a bit early how to fly, I assume?" The assumption wasn't completely random, she had been reading a bit in her Harry Potter books and stumbled on the name of Lucian Bole as a Slytherin quidditch player. It was probably a safe guess that Claryssa was related to him at least, if not his daughter.

Claryssa's cheeks puffed up and her face turned red. Karen realised she might be being a bit harsh on an eleven year old. This was the way she was brought up after all. But Karen had no tolerance for bullying, especially not on a sweet girl like Sarah.

"My dad's not an ex-quidditch player, he plays for the Falmouth Falcons!" Claryssa Bole practically yelled at Karen. So he had continued his career in quidditch? Yay him. Karen heard the boy who had been about to stand up for Sarah whisper that the Falmouth Falcons were known for violence during games. Should have figured.

"Doesn't change the facts. You already know how to fly, she doesn't. Your friend over there wasn't doing so good himself." Karen nodded towards a black headed Slytherin boy standing next to Bole whose grin faded at her words. "And you know what? One of the worst fliers I ever saw was a born and raised wizard while the best I knew had muggle grandparents, so obviously muggle blood has nothing to do with it."

Bole glared at her and the other Ravenclaws, then scoffed and stormed off, her fellow Slytherins following behind.

Karen turned to Sarah and gave her an encouraging smile. "And that worst flier is a brilliant wizard, by the way. He's just good at other stuff." Sarah beamed at her and wiped the tears from her face.

As they walked together back to the castle one of the other girls asked; "Are Slytherins always this mean? I'd heard stories but that Bole girl is just awful."

"They're not all like that." Karen told her. "The good ones just don't speak up much. They're probably scared they'll get bullied by the mean ones if they do. Besides, I guess the attitude kind of catches when you're around people like that all the time."

"It's still awful." The boy said fiercely.

"Don't judge them too harshly," Karen said, "they were raised this way and are just acting the way they think is normal. I'm sure there's good ones there you just don't know." She found herself almost doubting her own words, though. Every Slytherin she knew had been a rather mean person. Broken and scarred, doing what they knew and acting this way for various reasons, some even forgivable ones. But still mean.

Once they reached the castle Karen headed off to her private Charms lesson. She always enjoyed Flitwick's classes, she seemed to have a knack for spell work. With the new information about her birth father Karen couldn't help but wonder whether this was an inherited talent. Flitwick had been especially pleased when she was sorted into Ravenclaw, he had given her a small cupcake during their first class after the sorting. Of course, he had made her practice her Wingardium Leviosa on it first, but she had been allowed to eat it afterwards.

After that Karen was dead tired but decided that it would be better to start on her pile of homework rather than take a nap before dinner. Just then she would rather have a quiet place to study and at this hour there were probably lots of students in the library so Karen decided to visit Kenan.

She took the hidden passageway Kenan had brought her out of during her first visit, behind a statue on the second floor. She enjoyed the chance to use her lumos charm, casting spells still fascinated her, and it wasn't long before she was in the secret painting room.

"Hey Kenan!" Karen said, dumping her bag next to the couch. "Guess what? Professor Trelawney apparently knew my…" Karen's words faded as she looked more clearly at the person she had at first taken to be Kenan. But this person wasn't the silvery transparent of a ghost. There was a real, living student in the room.

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A/N: Oh look, a cliffhanger-ish thing. Isn't that fun? ^^

So how'd you like this one? Reviews = love (and I loooove all of you who reviewed the last chapter \(°w°)/ *hug*)


	15. The Slytherin Boy

"Oh." Karen heard the sound come from her lips as she stared at the boy. He looked to be about her age, with grey eyes speckled with green and black hair in one of those emo-ish haircuts. He was handsome, his features soft but strong at the same time. He was taller than she was and gave off an aura of confidence. He also looked just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

"Um… sorry. I didn't know anyone else was here…" Karen found herself looking down instead of at his face. She saw it though, both saw and felt his eyes travel over her body, taking her in. His surprised expression was exchanged with a smile; a smirk, really. Karen saw from his robes that he was a Slytherin.

"No harm done. I didn't know Kenan showed this place to someone else." His accent was just the regular English one, not too thick or in any way difficult to understand, but somehow it matched his voice perfectly, making his words sound like melted chocolate. Karen wasn't sure what melted chocolate sounded like, but that was the image that came to her head as he spoke.

"Say, aren't you the girl who just joined third year? Karen something?" Karen nodded, feeling a blush creep onto her cheeks. Of course he knew who she was. Everyone knew.

"Karen Makarov." She managed, glancing up into his eyes. He was looking directly into hers.

"I'm Reid," he told her, "Blackmore."

There were a few moments of silence, which he then broke by saying; "So I hear you're a seer."

Karen nodded, cursing her failure to look at his face and speak properly. It had been going so well lately, she hadn't felt her shyness much except for in the beginning when people showered her with questions. She still got looks while walking down the hallways and this was what most people brought up first when they met her but those were the only times she really felt uncomfortable. She bit her cheek, deciding to just get it over with.

"Yeah." She had meant to just pour out the usual stream of information that answered most of people's questions but for some reason this was the answer that came out. Just 'yeah'.

Reid chuckled and sat down on the sofa. More like sprawled out on it, really. He raised an eyebrow at her and, realising how silly she looked still standing there, Karen sat down next to him.

"So what's that like? Got any prophecies for me?" Karen smiled a bit and explained the basics of what she knew to him.

"Harry Potter, huh? Well, he probably had the most interesting life you could have gotten to see, I'm sorry, _read_ about."

"Well, there were lots of other people that I watched through him, of course. And I think lots of them had interesting lives. In fact, I wish I knew more about them."

"You never saw a Blackmore I suppose?"

Karen shook her head. "Um, no. Sorry." She found herself thinking; 'I didn't see that much about death eaters' and immediately wanted to hit herself. Just because he was a Slytherin didn't mean his family had been involved with that side. She felt angry that in her mind that was an automatic connection.

"Don't worry about it, my family didn't participate much, I've been told. Of course, I remember it oh so well. I was all of three years old when the evil Dark Lord was killed." Karen laughed at the facial expressions that went with his sarcasm.

"I'm sure that must have been a very great experience for a three year old."

"But of course. Influenced my whole life, seeing my parents celebrate. It was probably my first real party." He waggled his eyebrows and Karen giggled.

"So um, if you were three then… you're a fifth year?" Karen asked, still smiling as she eyed him sideways.

"Wow, someone's an arithmancy person. Yeah, I'm in fifth year."

"Oh, I'm not into arithmancy at all. Or math, or anything. Just, I was two so I figured that'd make you a year older than me." Karen felt that little bit of heat threaten to expose her embarrassment through her cheeks again. Why was this embarrassing? This was exactly the kind of conversation she'd had with others and those never made her feel like this.

"Aren't you a third year?"

"Yeah, but I'm fourteen. Professor McGonagall decided it would be better for me to catch up to three years than four."

Reid nodded. "I guess that makes sense. But anyways, Kenan showed you the secret, huh? What'd you do to get the information?"

Karen's head tilted a bit sideways. "Do? I…" she blushed at the memory but explained about getting locked in by Peeves in the classroom.

Reid laughed at her misfortune, but said; "That's hardly fair though, that he just showed you the place cause you were lost. Me, I had to work for it."

He then told Karen about how he had used some of the commonly known shortcuts to pull a prank on his friend during his third year. Reid had cast spells on him from within the shortcuts, unseen. Always something silly and minor, only meant for humour. He did admit though that it was also meant as payback for his friend getting him put in detention for something his friend had done. After that Kenan had approached him, telling him that he enjoyed the interesting things he had done with the shortcuts and showed him this place.

"Wow." Karen commented when he was finished. "So that's what Kenan meant when he said he hoped I'd use this place for interesting things. I've mostly been using it to study."

"I don't think he minds so long as it isn't just used as a shortcut. I do sometimes pull pranks on people still." Reid laughed, "It's so funny to see their faces when they're walking down a hallway with no one behind them and then suddenly start dancing or their robes change colour or something."

Karen did giggle at that, just a bit. It would be funny, and the spells were harmless and easily reversible.

There was silence for a moment before Karen suddenly remembered that she had homework to finish, preferably before her lesson after dinner.

"Oh, right. I should probably go. I need to finish homework and stuff."

"Hey, don't let me stop you from doing it here. That's what you came for, wasn't it?"

"Well, yeah."

"So, do your homework. You must have a pile of it from all those extra lessons." Reid grinned at her and stretched. "I'll just take a nap, if you don't mind." With that he closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch.

"Um… sure." Karen muttered. She fetched her homework from her bag, trying not to make too much noise so she wouldn't disturb Reid's nap, and began working on her History of Magic essay. She kept glancing at him though, scolding herself for loosing focus every time she did. He seemed to fall asleep pretty quickly and at least she didn't wake him.

Eventually Karen gave up on her boring essay. It was almost dinner time anyways so she packed up her stuff, took one last look at the sleeping Reid, contemplated waking him and decided not to. She quietly opened one of the paintings and headed out, her head now once again filled with thoughts. Only this time they were about the nicest Slytherin she had so far met.

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A/N: So, who likes my new character?

Hope I didn't actually make some of you think I have something against Slytherin's in the last chapter. I just wanted to show the common view and then disprove it ;) Anywho, leave me reviews and tell me what you think!


	16. The Weekend

Karen closed her book with a sigh. She was sitting curled up in an armchair in the Ravenclaw common room, studying with the help of Mellyn. After the day's events her mind wasn't on the subject, a report on Pixies and their usefulness in potions.

"Your mind isn't here," Mellyn suddenly told her, "maybe you should finish it tomorrow."

"I guess." Karen admitted. She still hadn't told him about Trelawney and she hadn't told anyone about meeting Reid yet. It would be good to talk to someone about things so she recounted her chat with Trelawney. She didn't tell him about Reid. Not like there was anything to say about him really, just that she'd talked to him. So why was he occupying her mind as well?

"I guess I just haven't really thought of my birth-parents as real people before. I kind of wish I knew more about them now. Ever since hearing about my birth-mom I've begun wondering why…" Karen trailed off. The question had woken again in her mind and now it swirled around along with an image of Reid. She wasn't sure which to focus on.

"Maybe there's a way you can find out." Mellyn said, staring into the fire.

"How?" Karen asked, "Who would know more than Trelawney?"

Mellyn turned his eyes to her. "The other teachers know things too. Maybe not as much, but different things. I'm sure you'll find the information you require if you look hard enough."

Karen stared at him. Required? Did Mellyn use that word on purpose or was it just a coincidence? To her knowledge the Room of Requirement wasn't something everyone knew about. Besides, it was a room. It provided her with a room for things if she needed but… specific information? She wasn't sure.

"Mellyn, do you mean…?" Mellyn stared blankly at her with those bottomless eyes of his. Karen shook her head. It was probably just a coincidence he used that word. "I mean, you're right. I'll ask around. I think." She wasn't certain she wanted to know though. What if the reason was really bad? Or worse, what if she found information about her birth-parents, got to know more about them but couldn't find the reason for them not coming back for her?

It was an awful thought, so Karen decided to try to focus on the other thing on her mind: Reid. She contemplated the image of him floating around in her head. Why was it there? She had barely talked to him. Sure he was a new acquaintance but Mariah and Mellyn and Edyta and everyone else hadn't stuck so much in her thoughts.

She blinked. Was she…? No. She had only talked to him for a few minutes. It would be silly. Shaking her head to get rid of her thoughts, wishing she had a pensieve to really get them out of her mind, Karen got up and went to bed.

*i*i*i*

The next day was a Saturday, which for most students meant a break from their studies. Karen felt a pang of jealousy as she watched students playing around outside while she headed to a DADA lesson. She reminded herself that next weekend she would get a break too, as that would be the first Hogsmeade trip.

Flitton's lesson was fun that day and, even though it was a double lesson, he gave her no homework. Karen was immensely grateful for that and after the lesson she found Mariah, who was about to head out to enjoy the sunshine. The two of them walked down to the lake together where they found some Hufflepuffs Mariah knew playing what seemed like a water balloon fight, except they were in teams and the water was in different colours for each team, and if a balloon hit you the part of you that was hit turned that colour. Karen found it hilarious to see some people with blue hair or pink right arms. Mariah explained that if all of you turned into the other team's colour you joined their team, until there was no one left in one of the teams.

The two joined the game and soon some other people did too, so in the end there were about a dozen people playing. It was a really fun game, even though Karen eventually passed over to the other team she felt like a winner once that team won.

"How long will this colour stay on?" She asked with a laugh once they were walking back to the castle. She could just imagine the look on Professor Moyes (the new transfiguration teacher) if she showed up for her evening lesson coloured bright pink, with a purple leg.

"They fade in like an hour. You can also just use magic if you need to get rid of them quickly." Mariah demonstrated, turning herself back into regular colours. Karen copied her spell, taking a few tries but eventually getting the colours off. All except for her shoe, which kept turning purple again. Even Mariah tried the spell but as quickly as the colour faded it came back.

"This is not normal!" Mariah exclaimed in frustration and it was then that Karen heard a snicker. She turned around, looking at the other students in the Great Hall. Some of them were looking at the two of them but… there! Karen caught sight of Reid, who winked at her as soon as she looked at him, obviously the culprit.

"That little…" Karen wasn't sure whether to laugh or be angry, so she blushed. "Here, it was just someone messing with us." She turned her face away from Reid, hoping he hadn't seen the blush, and tried the spell one more time. This time it worked, turning her shoe its normal black colour.

"Messing with us? Who was?" Mariah glared around the room, looking for Reid without knowing who he was.

"It was… this guy I met yesterday. He told me he did this to his friend once… anyways, he stopped."

"Who's this guy?" Mariah asked suspiciously, noticing Karen's blush. "If he's a Puff I'll beat him up for you." The last part was said in a light hearted tone and Karen smiled.

"He's not a Hufflepuff." She told her.

"So he's a…?"

"Slytherin." Karen muttered.

"Wait, wait, and you're blushing over him? Karen, unless he's flipping awesome I'm gonna have to introduce you to some Puffs who're way more crush worthy."

"What?! I'm not… I mean… _I don't have a crush on him!_" Karen whispered the last part, glancing around and hoping no one heard her, which only caused Mariah to laugh.

"_Then why are you blushing?"_ She whispered back, causing Karen to blush some more. "Come on, who is this guy? I will get it out of you, you know."

"His name's Reid, and he's actually really nice."

"Reid… as in that guy with the long black hair?" She nodded over to the Slytherin table where Reid sat with some friends and Karen nodded quickly, grabbing Mariah's arm in case he saw her looking over. "Relax, he won't notice. Anyways, I don't actually know him so I can't say. I guess he's good looking but really, you can do better."

"I can… what? Hey, Slytherins aren't all that bad, you know. Just because they've got a bad reputation doesn't mean you should judge them all based on that!"

"Alright, alright. Sorry, I'm not saying all Slytherins are bad but… dating one? I haven't heard of a single case, ever, of a Slytherin dating outside his house. Maybe after school they do but while they're here? It's like they think the other houses aren't even worth considering."

Karen was a bit taken aback. Slytherins _never _dated outside their house while at school? It was true she hadn't heard of a case either, but then Harry hadn't exactly been a source for that sort of gossip. Slytherins had a lot of house pride but… never? She blinked. Wait, she wasn't planning on dating him anyways! Okay, she might have a little crush on him but it's not like she was planning to ask him out or anything. Gosh, she'd barely talked to the guy for ten minutes.

"Well, whatever. I wasn't planning on dating him anyways. I just… he's nice, okay?"

"Okay." Mariah said sceptically. "Seriously though, do you always blush so much when you've got a crush on someone? Cause you look like a tomato right now."

"I do not!" Karen yelled and Mariah laughed, which soon turned into both of them laughing. Shortly afterwards Mellyn entered the Great Hall and Karen introduced the two of them. Mellyn, despite how distant he seemed, appeared to like Mariah well enough and the three of them were together until dinner, chatting and playing explodable snap.

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A/N: I'm not dead! :D Yeah, sorry about how long it's been since the last update. Life happened. I did say I wasn't going to abandon this story though and I'll hold myself to that, even if a year passed without me writing anything I'd still come back and finish it! Let's hope there won't ever be a year though ^^;;

Anywho, I've been trying to come up with a plot for this (as I realized that it has none) and so far I have something but it's just so darn full of holes I'm not sure whether to use it. Until I sort that out, enjoy some randomness. Also, you have no idea how frickin happy I was when like four hours after I posted the last part there was already a review from the lovely Breakfast Princess and Reid and Karen got a ship name. Seriously, I've never had any of my characters have a ship name so I'm overjoyed. And Reidren sounds cool ^w^

If you'll spare me a review and let me know what you think (more randomness is okay?) then you'll make my whole day better and I'll love you forever, plus I'll give you interweb cookies ;)

p.s. I wasn't completely idle while life happened, I wrote tiny fanfic shorts! I'm uploading them as soon as this chapter's up, if you want to then please check out my Nobody Expects shorts ^^


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